Green Roof Resource

Earlier this month I was in Vienna, Austria to present at a conference on city surfaces. “Towards the City Surface of Tomorrow” focused on emissions from city surfaces and included some discussion on methods to reduce emission flows from surfaces. I attended as green roofs are a city surface technology that can reduce emissions to air and water.

While there were not many talks addressing solutions to diffuse emissions, I did learn more about roof surfaces and how roofs contribute to diffuse pollution. In Europe there are a greater percentage of metal roofs than there are in the United States. As a result, European cities are concerned with metals in stormwater runoff due to rooftop corrosion. While flashings are made of metal, the majority of roofs in the US are bitumen based. Therefore, stormwater runoff in the US can accumulate concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from roof or road runoff.  Many cities are challenged with managing stormwater, but specific environmental problems such as pollutant loads may be regional.

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