Technology for establishment of vegetated roofs (green roofs) has developed rapidly over recent years but knowledge about how these systems will develop over time is still limited. This study investigates vegetation development on unfertilised thin extensive vegetated roofs during a 3-year period. The vegetation systems investigated were designed to be low maintenance and had a saturated weight...

In coal mining hard roofs are one of the main factors causing the occurrence of rock bursts in working panels. To solve this problem, the solid backfill coal mining (SBCM) technique is proposed and used as an effective measure to prevent the rock bursts induced by hard roofs. However, due to the different backfill ratios of working planes, the control effects on hard roofs are quite unique. By ...

The use of green roofs is gaining increased recognition in many countries as a solution that can be used to improve environmental quality and reduce runoff quantity. To achieve these goals, pilot-scale green roof assemblies have been constructed and operated in an urban setting. From a stormwater management perspective, green roofs are 42.8-60.8% effective in reducing runoff for 200 mm soil dep...

Green roofs (with plant cover) are gaining attention in the United States as a versatile new environmental mitigation technology. Interest in data on the environmental performance of these systems is growing, particularly with respect to urban heat island mitigation and stormwater runoff control. We are deploying research stations on a diverse array of green roofs within the New York City area,...

Tehran is the capital city of Iran and its inhabitants are suffering from air pollution.Green roofs can be one of the choices to deal with this problem. In this paper, ability ofgreen roofs in absorbing four air pollutants (PM10, SO2, NO2, and CO2) in Tehran wasvaluated. First, the potential of 1 m2 of a hypothetical green roof in Tehran in absorbingPM10 and SO2 during 1 year was estimated usin...

In this paper we describe a procedure for generating building models from large scale vector maps and laser altimeter data. In contrast to other approaches the map information is not used to form hypotheses about the roofs. Our approach permits the recognition of additional structures as superstructures which can not be derived from building outlines shown in the map. First the vector map is an...

Background: Concrete buildings on Guam are exceptionally strong but also accumulate large amounts of heat. In the tropical environment of Guam, where 24 h average temperature ranges from 28 to 29oC year round, air conditioning is used every day and continuously. Concrete roofs are often painted light colors, which make them more reflective and accumulate less heat. They are also suitable for es...

Heat stress is one of the most severe climate threats to human society in a future warmer world. The situation is further exacerbated in urban areas by urban heat islands (UHIs). Because the majority of world’s population is projected to live in cities, there is a pressing need to find effective solutions for the heat stress problem. We use a climate model to investigate the effectiveness of va...

Loss of natural soil and vegetation within the urban environment can significantly affect the hydrologic cycle by increasing storm water runoff rates and volumes. In order to mitigate these modifications in urban areas engineered systems are developed, such as green roofs, to mimic and replace functions (evapo-transpiration, infiltration, percolation) which have been altered due to the impact o...

This paper presents a new approach for roof facet segmentation based on ridge detection and hierarchical decomposition along ridges. The proposed approach exploits the fact that every roof can be composed of a set of gabled roofs and single facets which are separated by the gabled roofs. In this work, firstly, building footprints stored in OpenStreetMap are used to extract 3D points on roofs. T...