Blue-Green Tops: Adapting Building Roofs for Climate Resilience

Country: Greece 

Lead organisation: University of Patras

Short Description:

Urban rooftops hold great potential for climate adaptation. Commonly made of high heat-capacity materials, they contribute to urban heat islands. Transforming them into blue-green roofs can cool cities, manage rainwater, enhance biodiversity, and improve living conditions. However, suitability depends on factors such as roof structure, age, and exposure to sun and wind. This project harnesses the power of Citizen Science (CS) to capture data necessary to accelerate roof transformation using the Colouring Cities Research Programme (CCRP, https://colouringcities.org/) open platform code and infrastructure to enable standardised microspatial data on roofs and buildings to be crowdsourced, visualised, and shared.

Dense urban areas like in Athens and Istanbul facing severe heat threats, offer prime opportunity for climate adaption and act as the starting point for blue-green transformation. This transformation is only achievable with active citizen and local stakeholder involvement, as their awareness and participation are crucial. Through citizen science, the project offers actionable, science-based solutions for enhancing climate resilience and presents a scalable, global model for the transformation of urban rooftops.

Objectives & Goals:

The CCRP expands on the citizen science activities that started with “Colouring Dresden” at the Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development (Germany) and is now to be extended with University of Patras (Greece) and the Technical University of Istanbul (Turkey). The project has three main objectives: (1) the further development of “Colouring Athens”, (2) the initiation of “Colouring Istanbul” and (3) the use of citizen science to collaboratively map information on rooftops, assess suitability and support their transformation into blue-green systems.

Website: https://athens.colouringcities.org/