The relationship between green roofs and the thermal environment in Taipei city

Abstract

During the last decade, a large amount of research has been published in Taiwan on different strategies for the reduction of the urban heat island effect. The most important strategy for reducing ambient temperature and mitigating the heat island effect is encouraging citizens to build a green roof on their own buildings. In order to analyze the effect of green roofs on the thermal environment, this paper collects temperature and humidity data from two buildings with different roof greening levels and tries to analyze the relationship between roof greening and the thermal environment in Taipei city. The result of this research can give citizens an idea what kind of thermal environment they can get if they make some greening on their roofs; moreover, it also can provide some useful data to governments for calculating the environmental benefit if they carry out the green roof policy. © 2010 WIT Press.