A roof journey
In today’s city environments, extreme weather conditions are a fact of life. Amsterdam, Mumbai, Nairobi or Sydney… climate change issues need to be tackled all around the world. In the last couple of decades, Amsterdam has dealt with larger amounts of rainwater, severe heat stress and a decreased biodiversity. In order to strengthen urban resilience to climate change, bluegreen (BG) roofs are increasingly being introduced. BG roofs place an additional water layer underneath the green layer. The idea is that these roofs reduce runoff after rainfall by retaining precipitation and mitigate heat stress, caused by increased evapotranspiration (the sum of evaporation from the land surface and transpiration from plants) and a higher albedo effect (the ability of surfaces to reflect sunlight).
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Living laboratory
With RESILIO, a project which lasted from November 2018 to April 2022, Amsterdam created a living laboratory: 10,000 m² of BG roofs on existing social housing and privately owned real estate. The latter took place through a municipal grant scheme. The roofs have a ‘Smart Flow Control’ which anticipates heavy rain or drought, releasing or retaining water accordingly. The roofs are connected in a network, enabling remote regulation of rooftop water levels, based on
weather forecasts and watermanagement settings. Ambitious ‘ecosystem’
RESILIO was developed in an Amsterdam ‘ecosystem’ which has experimented with BG roof solutions since 2013. Many of the partners involved in the project knew each other and their ambitions beforehand. Pilots and experiments, such as the first Polder roof and Project Smart Roof 2.0 (see chapter 2), had already brought the concept of micro watermanagement to life before the start of RESILIO.
Considerable progress
The RESILIO partnership, consisting of a quadruple collaboration between public authorities, knowledge institutes, the private sector and the voluntary sector, booked considerable progress in the adoption of governance strategies, cost-benefit analyses (CBA) and business case approaches, community involvement and engagement, public procurement, data collection and usage, as well as new Internet of Things (IoT) technology in a Decision Support System (DSS).
This report will guide you through the project and inform you about the lessons learned.
Editors: Age Niels Holstein, Joyce Langewen
Text Editor: Bas Berwers
Design: Wieke Braat, Eline Oort
Graphics: Didly Design
Front cover image: Innovation Lab Benno Premselahuis © Rooftop Revolution
Back cover image: Grant scheme roof Kop Weespertrekvaart © Wieke Braat
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