Hartman, Danielle M.. A geographic approach to modeling the impact of green roofs on combined sewer overflows in the Bronx. Retrieved from https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T36H4HS5
DescriptionThe Bronx, New York, like many older urban areas in the United States, suffers from the negative environmental impacts from combined sewer overflows (CSOs). Green roofs have been proposed as a best management practice to reduce stormwater runoff and CSOs. These vegetated roof tops can detain rainfall along with providing other benefits to the building owner and community. This paper describes a green roof stormwater model designed for the Bronx, New York. Building-level geographic data was used to estimate the potential area for green roof implementation in each sewer system subcatchment. A software program was designed as a decision support system with a green roof micro-model, a simple sewer system model, and an interactive map. The model results show that if extensive green roofs were implemented on all available flat roof space, then annual CSOs could be reduced by over 30%. This paper discusses the geographic variation of the model results, and the effectiveness of green roofs as a CSO best management practice is used to rank subcatchment performance.