Engineering Vegetated Roofing Systems to Optimize Stormwater Management

Click either date to Register: Nov 18, 2020 or Dec 16, 2020

Presenters: Karen Liu, PhD and James Weldon, GRP

Urban centres have high concentrations of impervious areas which pose a challenge in managing large volumes of stormwater. Heavy rain events or back-to-back storms cause problems like flooding, property damage, and combined overflow sewer discharge. Green infrastructure, such as vegetated roofs, can help mitigate these problems because they restore the hydrologic cycle in urbanized areas. Vegetated roof systems designed for maximum stormwater management decrease the volume of stormwater within the urban core and reliably delay travel time of stormwater to the treatment plant. These retention and detention strategies help alleviate the burden of heavy stormwater on our cities’ infrastructure.

Learning Objectives:

1. The distinction between stormwater retention and detention
2. The importance of detention in urban centres (i.e. Greater Toronto Area)
3. Existing roof top technologies
4. Using biomimicry to re-engineer vegetated roofing system
5. Collaboration: Landscape Architects, Architects, Civil Engineers