Gianni Vesuviano

Experimental analysis of green roof substrate detention characteristics

Green roofs may make an important contribution to urban stormwater management. Rainfall-runoff models are required to evaluate green roof responses to specific rainfall inputs. The roofs hydrological response is a function of its configuration, with the substrate - or growing media - providing both retention and detention of rainfall. The objective of the research described here is to quantify the detention effects due to green roof substrates, and to propose a suitable hydrological modelling approach. Laboratory results from experimental detention tests on green roof substrates are presented. It is shown that detention increases with substrate depth and as a result of increasing substrate organic content. Model structures based on reservoir routing are evaluated, and it is found that a one-parameter reservoir routing model coupled with a parameter that describes the delay to start of runoff best fits the observed data. Preliminary findings support the hypothesis that the reservoir routing parameter values can be defined from the substrates physical characteristics.

A generic hydrological model for a green roof drainage layer

A rainfall simulator of length 5 m and width 1 m was used to supply constant intensity and largely spatially uniform water inflow events to 100 different configurations of commercially available green roof drainage layer and protection mat. The runoff from each inflow event was collected and sampled at one-second intervals. Time-series runoff responses were subsequently produced for each of the tested configurations, using the average response of three repeat tests. Runoff models, based on storage routing (dS/dt = I-Q) and a power-law relationship between storage and runoff (Q = kS(n)), and incorporating a delay parameter, were created. The parameters k, n and delay were optimized to best fit each of the runoff responses individually. The range and pattern of optimized parameter values was analysed with respect to roof and event configuration. An analysis was performed to determine the sensitivity of the shape of the runoff profile to changes in parameter values. There appears to be potential to consolidate values of n by roof slope and drainage component material.

Defining green roof detention performance

Although it is widely accepted that the detention performance of green roofs is of interest to stormwater engineers and planners, no single metric allows detention to be unambiguously defined. Detention effects are highly sensitive to rainfall characteristics and antecedent conditions, and individual roofs typically exhibit wide variations in detention performance between storm events. This paper uses a straightforward hydrological model to explore two alternative approaches to describing detention performance: a probabilistic approach based on long time-series simulations; and a design storm approach. It is argued that the non-linear reservoir routing parameters (scale, k and exponent, n) provide fundamental descriptors of the detention process, with modelling enabling performance to be determined for specific rainfall inputs. The study utilises 30-year rainfall time-series predictions for four contrasting UK locations to demonstrate the utility of the two proposed design approaches and to comment on locational variations in detention performance.