A Study on Green Roofs: Benefits, Challenges and Possibilities

Green roofs are considered to be a sustainable approach to mitigate the negative effect of urbanization. Due to rapid building construction activities, infrastructure development and increased land costs, green areas are reducing at a fast pace in cities. To cater to this situation, people are turning towards the usage of green roofs. It has the potential for increasing urban green footprint thereby directing towards sustainability. It is also easier to cater to roof surface for greening, than to vertical surfaces of buildings. In this paper, a systematic bibliographic study has been done to trace the benefits that green roof provides in an urban setting. Literature review suggests the benefits of green roofs are spread across a large canvas, which has been tried to streamline and summarized in this paper. The paper primarily focuses on thermal comfort, economic and environmental benefits of green roofs apart from other benefits.