ArtculoSUST2018.pdf (57.69 MB)
Viability of green roofs as a flood mitigation element in the central region of Chile
journal contribution
posted on 2018-04-26, 14:55 authored by Daniel Mora-Melia, Carlos S. Lopez-Aburto, Pablo Ballesteros-Perez, Pedro Munoz-VelascoPopulation increase and urban development over the last 20 years in Chile have outgrown most rainwater drainage and evacuation systems. Many cities located in the central region suffer from frequent floods in some of their sectors during winter rainfall events. In addition, the lack of green spaces in these cities leads to biodiversity loss, increasing temperatures, greater energy demands, etc. Green roofs offer a solution that can mitigate climate change by reducing the runoff in cities with extensive, highly impermeable areas. This work analyses the installation of green roofs as a potential solution to the sectorial floods suffered by many cities in central Chile. The methodology includes the identification of conflictive sectors in the city of Curicó, hydrological modelling with the Storm
Water Management Model (SWMM) software, the consideration of different distributions and types
of green roof surfaces, and computational simulations to determine the feasibility of green roofs for
preventing floods. The results show that, for moderate rainfall events, all studied sectors could avoid flooding if at least 50% of the surrounding area had green roofs (irrespective of the type of green roof). In contrast, in the presence of strong rainfall events, only some semi-extensive and extensive green roofs covering 60% to 95% of the surrounding area, respectively, could prevent flooding
Funding
This study was supported by the Program Fondecyt Regular (Project 1180660) of the Comision Nacional de Investigacion Cientifica y Tecnologica (Conicyt), Chile; the CIOB Bowen Jenkins Legacy Research Fund under Grant number BLJ2016/BJL.01, United Kingdom; and NERC with the Environmental Risks to Infrastructure Innovation Programme under the Grant number NE/R008876/1, United Kingdom.
History
School
- Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering
Published in
SustainabilityVolume
10Issue
4Citation
MORA-MELIA, D. ...et al., 2018. Viability of green roofs as a flood mitigation element in the central region of Chile. Sustainability, 10(4): 1130.Publisher
© The authors. Published by MDPIVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/Acceptance date
2018-04-03Publication date
2018Notes
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by MDPI under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ISSN
1937-0695Publisher version
Language
- en