RESEARCH ARTICLE


Hydrological Modeling of Green Roofs Runoff by Nash Cascade Model



Nataliya Krasnogorskaya1, Antonia Longobardi2, Mirka Mobilia2, *, Leisan Flyurovna Khasanova1, Anastasia Igorevna Shchelchkova1
1 Department of Safety of Production and Industrial Ecology, Ufa State Aviation Technical University, Ufa, Russia
2 Department of Civil Engineering, University of Salerno, Fisciano (SA), Italy


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Creative Commons License
© 2019 Krasnogorskaya et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Salerno - Via Giovanni Paolo II, 132 - 84084 Fisciano (SA), Italy; Tel: +39 089963409; E-mail: mmobilia@unisa.it


Abstract

Background:

Green roofs (GRs) technology has gained increasing interest in recent years since it offers multiple benefits to urban environments, citizens and buildings. Eco-covers can capture some water nutrient pollutants, filter air pollutants and moderate the urban heat island effect. Beyond these benefits, abundant literature stresses the role played by the GRs from the hydrological perspective. They allow to face the increasing stress on the traditional urban drainage systems by reducing the annual stormwater runoff. In light of this, the hydrological behavior prediction of a vegetated cover is essential for urban planners, policy makers and engineers in order to quantify runoff mitigation potential so as to optimize their application.

Objective:

The aim of the present research is to meet this need by testing the accuracy of Nash cascade model in predicting the stormwater production of GR systems.

Materials and Methods:

The proposed model has been calibrated against hourly data of thirteen rainfall-runoff events observed at two experimental sites, both located within the campus of the University of Salerno, southern Italy. Event scale model calibration, aimed at the identification of the storage coefficient parameter, has been based on the optimization of a number of error statistics.

Results and Conclusion:

Despite its simplicity, the investigated model appears adequately to be able to predict the runoff production from the experimental green roofs with a good degree of accuracy, as described by the Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency index, which ranges between 0.54 and 0.94.

Keywords: Green roof, Sustainable development, Urban drainage system, Nash model, Mediterranean climate, Eco-covers.