The University of Sheffield
Department of Civil and Structural Engineering

Simon Poë - Research Student

Simon Poë

Telephone: 07720 883630

email : Cip08srp@sheffield.ac.uk

Research Group

Research Project

The physical influences affecting a green roof's hydrologic response

Green roofs can potentially form an integral part of any sustainable drainage strategy, particularly in urban areas. However, the relative scarcity of commercial hydrologic engineering software applications capable of including green roof contributions in the analysis is surely restricting the number of green roof installations within SUDS strategies.

This research aims to establish a physics-based approach that equates different soil-water contents, climatic boundary conditions and vegetation and substrate resistance factors to soil-water potential by:

  1. Generating an empirical data set to enable analysis of hydrologic performance of different green roof configurations.
  2. Identifying water balance changes in roof configurations during wetting and drying cycles to underpin modelling of soil-water fluxes via algorithms.
  3. Establishing the quantitative impact of each physical influence on water balance, equating it to a ψ value.
  4. Developing a model that predicts green roof retention and detention by estimating soil-water fluxes in accordance with the θ-ψ relationship.