In many places, ongoing urban expansion, in conjunction with higher traffic volumes, have reduced or dissolved the separation between environmental noise zones. This is specifically the case near airports, with conflicting land-use demands for housing and flight operations. Apart
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In many places, ongoing urban expansion, in conjunction with higher traffic volumes, have reduced or dissolved the separation between environmental noise zones. This is specifically the case near airports, with conflicting land-use demands for housing and flight operations. Apart from zoning, aircraft noise plays no role in urban design and form studies. Serving as tall noise barriers, recent studies in a designated test street demonstrated the potential of buildings as noise barriers for reducing aircraft noise in urban contexts. Correlating sound shielding levels with the elevation angle of passing aircraft, results from the test street environment were used for mapping shielding potential areas on a regional scale. This study introduces a spatial framework combining aircraft trajectory, and land-use, geo-data to determine such areas using a geo-spatial processing methodology in QGIS. It is applied the Amsterdam Schiphol airport region as case study. The methodology determines areas affected by noise from passing aircraft at elevation angles identified as most indicative for leveraging optimal shielding by buildings. The subsequent map layers can aid urban planners in decision-making processes for further exploring the potential of urban design for mitigating aircraft noise in urban airport regions, serving further tool development for livable and healthier neighborhood design.