Title: Monitoring energy reduction through applying green roofs to residential buildings in Dubai

Authors: Hanan Taleb

Addresses: Faculty of Engineering, British University in Dubai, P.O. Box 345015, UAE

Abstract: Green roofing in a building has many advantages including absorbing rainwater, providing thermal insulation, enhancing the ecology, creating a peaceful retreat for people and animals, improving air quality and helping to offset the air temperature and heat island effect. The aim of this paper is to monitor energy saving in the residential buildings of Dubai after applying green roofing techniques. The paper also attempts to provide a thermal analysis after the application of green roofs. A villa in Dubai was chosen as a case study. With the aid of energy simulation software, namely DesignBuilder, as well as manual recording and calculations, the energy savings after applying the green roofing were detected. To that extent, the paper draws some recommendations with regard to the types of green roofing that should be used in these particular climatic conditions based on this real experiment that took place over a one year period.

Keywords: residential buildings; Dubai; energy saving; green roofing; computational fluid dynamics; CFD; thermal comfort; energy monitoring; energy reduction; simulation; sustainable design; sustainability.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSDES.2014.065041

International Journal of Sustainable Design, 2014 Vol.2 No.3, pp.229 - 243

Received: 05 Dec 2013
Accepted: 13 Mar 2014
Published online: 25 Oct 2014 *

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