Green roof benefits, opportunities and challenges – A review

Research on the green roof has been raised expeditiously over the past decade. Green roof have been proposed as the sustainable practice to mitigate the adverse effects of urbanization. This review paper includes the history of the green roof, green roof components and multiple benefits (environmental, social and economical) associated with the green roof technology. This paper also emphasizes how the green roof works in different areas, their performance in reducing the stormwater and energy costs, improving air and ecological performance. The benefits of green roof show that it plays an important role in making cities safe, sustainable and resilient to climate change. Therefore, many countries are giving incentives to the house owners for the application of green roof. However, initial high construction costs, high maintenance costs and roof leakage problems are the main challenges associated with the application of green roofs. These challenges can be overcome with the of new cost effective green roof design that can work more effectively and efficiently in any area. Advanced modification and trends of green roof application are also included in this paper. The paper also highlights the research challenges and research gap of the green roof. At the end, for the better performance of the green roofs, some of the recommendations are also provided.