Mularczyk, Ragnar
(2024)
Investigating the potential for green roofing in Nottingham, UK.
MRes thesis, University of Nottingham.
Abstract
The importance of developing wide-ranging sustainable practices is gradually being more greatly appreciated and demands for implementation are growing. Green roofs have a history pre-dating the recent dawn of sustainable innovation, though they are now progressively being recognised for the sustainable benefits they can offer, including supporting biodiversity, improving building thermal insulation, and reducing stormwater runoff. Nevertheless, their uptake has been hindered by prominent barriers including cost, a persisting lack of awareness and understanding, and insufficient incentivisation. Local context can have significant influences upon the opportunities for green roofs to become widespread, including the current priorities of the local authority.
Nottingham, UK, has the ambitious target of becoming the first UK city to become carbon neutral, by 2028. Built upon the foundation of this rationale, this study investigates the potential for more local green roofing. Stakeholder interviews were conducted, with several local authority participants, to understand their perceptions surrounding green roofs and the prospect of increased uptake. Stakeholder suggestions regarding factors influencing the suitability of buildings were integrated in an experimental remote building assessment analysis using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). This GIS analysis explored the suitability of existing buildings in Nottingham city centre for green roof retrofit. Stakeholders demonstrated general support for green roofs and a positive predicted future, despite acknowledging the range of well-known barriers, which are suggested to be augmented in the construction industry, where lacking awareness appears to generate significant GR resistance. The GIS results indicated a promising practical potential for retrofit green roofs: 43.1% of roof area was deemed suitable according to the criteria, and a scoring system was devised to distinguish degrees of suitability. Nevertheless, limitations to the results of this study are acknowledged and scrutinised, largely relating to potential biases associated with the interview candidate sampling method, and GIS data availability and suitability. Recommendations for further research are suggested, including targeting construction practitioners for interviews, ground-based truthing to assess GIS accuracy, and modelling expected impacts of increased citywide green roofs.
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