Aircraft noise exposure causes annoyance, sleep disturbance and contributes to the development of severe long-term health outcomes for populations living under frequently used air routes. Traditional land-use based noise abatement strategies have shown limited success in mitigating these effects, prompting interest in alternative design measures such as the use urban greenery to improve soundscapes and reduce noise annoyance. This study assesses the effect of the visual presence of trees on aircraft noise perception during flyover events in a controlled setting. An audio-visual Virtual Reality (VR) experiment was conducted, showcasing two scenarios of a residential inner courtyard during a flyover event with and without trees. Following each scenario, participants (N=33) rated their soundscape perception using standardized soundscape questionnaires (ISO-12913). Preliminary results suggest that the scenarios with the trees present were on average perceived as acoustically more pleasant compared to those without greenery. This suggests that greenery, particularly trees, positively influence the perception of aircraft noise in urban environments through non-acoustical factors, warranting further investigation. These results contribute to a more mechanistic understanding of the effect of urban greenery on aircraft noise perception and aim to provide a base for future in-situ studies.

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.