Assessing the environmental sustainability of green roofs through LCA analysis

In the last decades, there has been the need to promote urban sustainability and NBS strategy is fundamental: Green Infrastructure are widely implemented, and, among GI, green roofs are a very interesting systems with a huge number of benefits. The technology of vegetative roofs, nowadays, is spread around the world and precise guidelines for their implementation have been created. The assets of these infrastructures are various and range from energy savings and UHI reduction to social and psychological benefits, providing environmental advantages, a good water runoff control, improvement in air quality, water quality and urban sustainability as well as many other benefits. The scope of this thesis work is to assess the environmental impacts of green roofs through an LCA analysis, focusing on eight different green roofs characterized by four plant types and two different thicknesses for the substrate. First, a study regarding energy savings and insulation level, related to these technologies, has been performed.