Abstract:
Urban environments tend to lack the capacity to absorb water from precipitation.
This is due to vegetated surfaces being replaced by impermeable ones, such as
concrete, bitumen or similar. As a result problems can occur, where a period of
heavy rainfall coincides with sudden increases in surface water runoff. This in turn
can lead to a city’s sewerage system becoming overloaded. Sustainable Urban
Drainage Systems (SUDS), are recognized worldwide as a successful manner by
which to mitigate this phenomenon. One of the principal components of SUDS are
permeable areas in an urban setting, which have the ability to absorb and retain
rainfall that would otherwise flow as surface runoff. To date there has been little
research into what the effect of a massive increase in green roofs would have for
cities in Ecuador. As a developing country, it is not uncommon for cities’
sewerage systems to suffer collapse when faced with sudden rainfall peak loads. It
is suggested in this paper, that instead of looking to implement costly sewerage
expansion programs, it would be more cost effective to implement city scale green
roof systems. The paper sets out to quantify the theoretical effect of such an
initiative