Abstract
The green wall is an engineered technology for stormwater management and climate change mitigation at the urban level. At the building scale, these energy efficiency measures are suitable for improving indoor comfort conditions and for reducing energy needs. Several guidelines are available about vertical greening systems, but these propose design parameters and performance evaluation criteria, often incomparable. In order to facilitate the implementation of proper technical standards, this paper proposes a critical review of more recent scientific investigations. All parameters for the design optimization are discussed as well as the achievable social and private benefits by taking into consideration the type of study (numerical or experimental), the climate conditions, the analysis period, all technical requirements of the green layer as well as of the back wall. The review underlines that a multi-criteria design approach is needed for green vertical systems. Thus, the paper is concluded with a SWOT analysis, evidencing “strengths”, “weaknesses”, “opportunities” and “threats”. The analysis shows that the highlighted benefits will acquire greater relevance considering the increase in global temperatures and the growing need to redevelop densely built urban centers, while some negative aspects may be filled in the future with a deeper preparation of designers and careful choice of materials. The review paper shows, therefore, drivers and barriers occurring designing and implementing green walls.
Highlights
In order to facilitate the implementation of proper technical standards, this paper proposes a critical review of more recent scientific investigations
Susurova et al [19] have proposed a model focused on plant physiological processes, including evapotranspiration and radiative and convective heat exchanges interesting the plant layer, the facade, the surrounding environment and the ground: the model takes into account individual plant characteristics inputs and weather data; it should be noted, that this model has been verified with a set of experiments that measured thermal performance of both bare and vegetated facade of an educational building in Chicago, during the summer
GWs have a great potential for improving the building energy performance, the acoustic and the indoor microclimatic comfort
Summary
This paper is organized in three sections: after the Introduction (Section 1), Section 2 discusses the accuracy of available experimental data and the reliability of adopted simulation models for characterizing the GWs’ performance. The paper ends with a SWOT matrix that allows visualizing the different internal strengths and weaknesses of a building solution and its external opportunities, threats and weaknesses that might be faced during project management
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