Abstract
Indoor cooling is preferred during hot summers but unappreciated in cold winters. With this research, we aimed to clarify the cooling performances of roof greening throughout the year and identify the optimum roof greening coverage for the indoor thermal environment in Chenzhou, a city in China with hot summers and cold winters. The layout of buildings, building materials, and local climate data of Chenzhou were collected. The ENVI-met model was applied as the analytical tool after its accuracy was confirmed by a field experiment. The Kriging model was employed to interpret the annual effects of roof greening. The analytical results revealed that in Chenzhou, roof greening reduced indoor temperatures throughout the year, and the higher the coverage of roof greening, the greater the performance of indoor cooling. Moreover, hot climates enhanced the indoor cooling performances of roof greening. From the view of annual thermal perception, the increase in roof greening coverage reduced the duration of warm perceptions throughout the year and extended the perceptions of slightly warm, slightly cool, and cool. Generally, increased roof greening coverage improved the indoor thermal perception in Chenzhou throughout the year. The ENVI-met + Kriging model, an evaluation method of annual cycles, can be used to evaluate the annual performance of roof greening in terms of indoor thermal environment in other climate zones.
Highlights
The natural landscape has been superseded by hard facilities such as roads and buildings in the urbanization processes, causing urban heat islands (UHIs) in the built environment [1,2,3]
Many other studies investigated the impact of greening systems on the indoor thermal environment, and proved that the indoor cooling caused by roof greening was determined by the
This research evaluated the impacts of roof greening based on an annual cycle rather than a typical summer day, which is a more suitable method for climate zones with hot summers and cold winters
Summary
The natural landscape has been superseded by hard facilities such as roads and buildings in the urbanization processes, causing urban heat islands (UHIs) in the built environment [1,2,3]. Green infrastructures, including green roofs and vertical green walls, are commonly employed by planners to mitigate UHI [7,8,9,10]. UHIs. In Germany, the Landscaping and Landscape Development and Research Society (FLL) established the first guideline for green roof planning, called the “Guideline for the planning, Execution and Upkeep of Green-Roof Sites”, requiring newly planned buildings to implement roof greening to compensate for environmental ruin [13]. Canada, Japan, Singapore, and Hong Kong, China, have promoted green roof planning though incentive or mandatory policies [14,15]
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