Building and Environment 66 (2013) 23e28

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Building and Environment

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Directions in green roof research: A bibliometric study

Lior Blank a, *, Amiel Vasl a, Shay Levy a, Gary Grant a, b, Gyongyver Kadas a, c,
Amots Dafni a, Leon Blaustein a
a
Kadas Green Roofs Ecology Center, Institute of Evolution and Department of Evolutionary and Environmental Biology, Faculty of Natural Sciences,
University of Haifa, Haifa 31905, Israel
b
Green Roof Consultancy Ltd, 72 Borough High Street, London SE1 1XF, UK
c
Environmental Research Group, Sustainability Research Institute, University of East London, London E16 2RD, UK

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Green roof research is a multidisciplinary and new research area. We conducted a bibliometric quanti-
Received 13 November 2012 fication to assess the rate of publications in specific areas of research for this novel research area based on
Received in revised form the scientific literature as available from the Web of Science. Bibliometric research can provide valuable
8 April 2013
information about changes in the trends within a particular area of research. For example, we found that
Accepted 20 April 2013
the number of publications in this field increased in the last two decades at very similar pace to other
pre-established academic disciplines. We also found that papers on green roofs were classified into 32
Keywords:
research areas. There was very little change in the frequency of most research areas through time. The
Architecture
Biodiversity
percentages of plant sciences, forestry, marine and freshwater biology and biodiversity conservation of
Landscape ecology the total research areas classifications used each year increased significantly with time, while architec-
Living roof ture decreased significantly with time signifying an increased interest in environmental issues and less
focus on architectural issues. The distribution of publications between countries has been skewed, with
the USA and the EU conducting 66% of the research, and thus allocation of research effort is focused in
those continents and predominantly in temperate ecosystems. However, there has been a sharp increase
in the number of countries that conduct green roof research. Our work provides a suite of indicators that
can be combined to give a useful picture of the development of green roof research and identifies the
challenges which lie ahead for this novel research area.
Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction flora and fauna [7e11]. However, it is only relatively recently that
comprehensive research has been undertaken.
The establishment of growing media and plants on the roofs of One of the driving forces behind the upsurge in green roof
buildings has taken place since ancient times [1]. Greened roofs research is the need to provide a solid scientific knowledge to guide
provide benefits far beyond the aesthetic aspect. They store rainfall, future sustainable urban design and management. Green roof
which delays runoff and promotes evapotranspiration [2]. During research, as an interdisciplinary scientific effort, can play an active
hot weather, green roofs reduce heat flux through the roof by role with the integration of ideas, which are derived from a variety
evapotranspiration, physically shading the roof, and increasing the of disciplines, including engineering, biology, architecture and ge-
insulation and thermal mass, thereby lowering the energy de- ography [12].
mands of the building’s cooling system [3e5]. They reduce pol- One way of monitoring the emergence of new fields is to
lutants such as carbon dioxide [6]. Green roof habitats show examine the papers published on the topic. A more simple yet more
promise for providing local habitat that can support a diversity of comprehensive approach to understanding the growth of a field
may be offered by bibliometric quantification [13] of a related
specific term during a determined period of time. Bibliometric
studies are an established tool, used to survey research areas and
hundreds of such papers are already published in various fields
* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ972 4 8288328; fax: þ972 4 8246554. such as Ecology [14],Medicine [15], Psychology [16] and Economics
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (L. Blank), [email protected]
[17]. These studies synthesize existing knowledge to understand
(A. Vasl), [email protected] (S. Levy), [email protected]
(G. Grant), [email protected] (G. Kadas), [email protected] (A. Dafni), trends and understand where information may be lacking in the
[email protected] (L. Blaustein). various fields. Using the ISI Web of Science to construct a database

0360-1323/$ e see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2013.04.017
24 L. Blank et al. / Building and Environment 66 (2013) 23e28

of all the papers published on green roofs in the last two decades, A bibliographic database consisting of 300 references was pro-
the objectives of this work were to (1) portray the change in the duced in Endnote X2. In order to compare the yearly trend in the
yearly rate of publication in green roofs research, (2) identify the number of publications to another newly emerging field, we
most studied research areas in green roof research, (3) characterize compared the trend we found for green roofs research to the trends
some essential trends in green roof research in terms of research for landscape ecology research, which is also an emerging field of
areas and studied systems, and (4) identify the challenges which lie research over recent decades [18,19]. A major and continuous
ahead in green roof research. Compared to more established growth in green roof research began in 1992. Therefore, we checked
research areas, green roofs is a relatively young research area. also the trend from 1993 to 2012 and in parallel, the corresponding
However, research in this field is on-going in the last two decades trend of the first 20 years in landscape ecology research (1977e
and we believe that this bibliometric approach can provide a 1996). We plotted the yearly change in the number of publications
thorough and unbiased overview which will help in evaluating past for these two disciplines and compared the slopes after fitting a
directions and recognizing areas that have been overlooked. linear trend line.
We also used the research areas categories provided by the Web
of Science. These categories were assigned at the level of individual
2. Methods
publication. Each publication can be assigned to more than one
research area. For each year starting from 2001 (prior to this year,
We used the ISI Web of Science (http://www.isiknowledge.com)
there were only one or two publications each year in green roof
to search for peer-reviewed journal papers on green roofs. Specif-
research) we recorded the number of articles assigned to each
ically, we used the search terms “green roof*”, “living roof*”,
category. We used the country of affiliation of authors for assigning
gründach, “ecological roof*”, “roof garden*”, “turf roof*” and “sod
geographical distribution of papers.
roof*”.
For evaluating possible changes in the frequency of research
We searched the literature published on this database on green
areas over time, we used Spearman rank correlation coefficient
roofs to extract (1) the total number of publications listed each year,
[20], a non-parametric measure of correlation. It was used here to
(2) the geographical locations of authors, and (3) research areas.
test the strength and direction of the relationship between the
Clarifying the geographical distribution of the authors allows us to
frequency of a research area and time. P < 0.05 was considered
categorize the climatic conditions and the ecosystems that papers
statistically significant.
are considering.
It is important to note that not all green roof research will be
captured by the Web of Science. Research may be reported in 3. Results
websites, in languages other than English (e.g. there is an extensive
literature in German starting from the early 1960s) and some Publications on green roofs appeared only sporadically in the
conference proceedings or technical reports not indexed by the late 1960s and during the 1970s (Fig. 1). Until 1992 only four
Web of Science. However, the peer-review process serves to some publications were listed by ISI. The number of papers steadily
extent as a reasonable filter for rigorous scientific work. increased from the early 90 s, reaching 74 papers published in 2012.

Fig. 1. Yearly rate of publication in green roofs research (upper graph) compared to landscape ecology research (lower graph). aall represent the slope over all years while a20
represent the slope of only the first 20 years: 1993e2012 and 1977e1996 for green roofs research and landscape ecology, respectively.
 L. Blank et al. / Building and Environment 66 (2013) 23e28 25

Prior to 1969, we found no publication using the keywords of our indication for the change in distribution of the country of origin of
search. The slope of yearly change in publications in green roofs was publications is the yearly change in the number of countries (Fig. 3).
0.93 and for landscape ecology it was 4.78 (Fig. 1). When comparing Clearly there has been a sharp increase in the number of countries,
only the trend between 1993 and 2012 in green roofs research and increasing from one country throughout the 1990s to 24 countries
the first 20 years of landscape ecology research (1977e1996), the in 2012. This trend is similar to the trend for landscape ecology in
differences between disciplines were considerably smaller, 2.7 for the first 20 years of research e increasing from one country in the
the former and 2.63 for the latter (Fig. 1). late 1970s to 21 and 16 countries in 1995 and 1996, respectively. In
Green roof research has attracted wide international interest 2012, authors from 37 countries published papers in landscape
(Fig. 2). A total of 31 countries, representing six continents are ecology. Although it is difficult from such a survey to infer the cli-
represented in the survey. However, the distribution of publications matic conditions and the ecosystem each study represents, we
between countries is skewed. The two leading contributors were conservatively estimate that most studies consider green roofs in
the USA (w34%) and EU countries (w33%). Asian countries temperate regions (Fig. 4).
contributed about 20% of publications while African countries The 300 papers were classified into 32 research areas (Fig. 5).
contributed only one publication. For comparison, African countries This highlights the interdisciplinary nature on green roof research.
contributed six times more publications (after standardizing to the The two major contributors were ‘engineering’ and ‘environmental
total number of publications) to landscape ecology. Another sciences ecology’. There was very little change in the frequency of
most research areas through time. The frequency of four topics
(plant sciences, forestry, marine and freshwater biology and
biodiversity conservation, r ¼ 0.78, 0.84, 0.66 and 0.73, respec-
tively) increased significantly (Fig. 6). Architecture, on the other
hand, decreased significantly with time (r ¼ 0.79).
Thirty six percent of the articles have not yet been cited (Fig. 7).
About 38% of the articles received between one and nine citations,
and about 14% have been cited 20 or more times.

4. Discussion

This study clarifies how the status of research on green roofs has
evolved during the past 20 years. It also identifies the skewed
global distribution of study sites and allocation of effort in certain
ecosystems and research areas. Finally, it helps identify the chal-
lenges which lie ahead.

Fig. 3. Yearly change in the number of countries contributing papers on green roofs
Fig. 2. Distribution of papers according to country between 2001 and 2012. We and landscape ecology in the first 20 years of research: 1993e2012 and 1977e1996 for
included the entire EU as a classification. green roofs research and landscape ecology, respectively.
26 L. Blank et al. / Building and Environment 66 (2013) 23e28

Fig. 4. Number of publications per country (between 2001 and 2012) overlaid on terrestrial ecoregions map.

When comparing the pace of change in the number of green roof Green roofs commonly support various invertebrates, including
publications in the first 20 years to the pace of change in landscape beetles, ants, bugs, flies, bees, spiders, and leafhoppers [8e11].
ecology, the picture is similar. After this period, there is a sharp Green roofs have also been used by breeding birds [7]. Green roofs
increase in the number of publications and the pace almost doubles are also mentioned in the context of reconciliation ecology. Francis
for landscape ecology. In addition, the number of countries pub- and Lorimer (2011) [24] argued that for maximizing green roof
lishing papers in landscape ecology almost doubled from 21 in the potential for supporting biodiversity, two factors need to be
mid 90 s to 37 in 2012. These two trends illustrate the establish- considered - heterogeneous designs and a landscape-scale
ment of this novel research area, and potentially suggest the future approach. However, as seen in our survey, biodiversity research
increase in green roofs research once it has been firmly established has received only a small fraction of the research effort. Many
as an academic discipline. questions are yet to be fully answered, such as: how to optimize
Although green roofs show promise for contributing to local biodiversity on green roofs; how to establish a viable network of
habitat and species conservation, this issue has received little green roofs that will help to support biodiversity and serve as
attention until recently, according to our survey. The results pre- stepping stones to link existing habitats; and how extensive roofs
sented clearly portray a rapid growth and characterize an inter- can contribute to the formation of such networks. However, there is
disciplinary science. This growth is probably the result of increased an apparent trend signifying a decrease interest in architecture
awareness to environmental issues and the desire to harness green issues and an increase in research in environmental issues such as
roofs to mitigate environmental impacts such as managing storm plant sciences, forestry, marine and freshwater biology and biodi-
water runoff [21] and urban heat islands [22]. versity conservation. We believe that these trends are the result of
Approximately 36% of the green roof articles have not been cited. how green roofs research has developed: in its beginning it
In fact, this is a typical situation. For example, more than one fifth of addressed design and engineering issues and as it became estab-
the articles published in 1984 were not cited four years later [23]. lished, it turned to other directions such as environmental and
This figure must be interpreted with caution. Roughly, it usually ecological issues.
takes approximately a year for a new publication to begin to be cited. The research community (as determined by the country of
Thus, there is likely to be some underestimation for the year 2012. affiliation of authors), is dominated by the USA and countries in the
 L. Blank et al. / Building and Environment 66 (2013) 23e28 27

Fig. 5. Distribution of papers (between 2001 and 2012) according to research areas categories assigned by ISI.

European Union. These countries represent mainly temperate re-

gions. Few studies have been performed in dry ecosystems. We
suggest several reasons explaining this pattern. Green roofs or turf
(sod) roofs in Northern Scandinavia, used for securing water-
proofing in high winds, have been around for centuries [25]. The
modern green roof originated during the 20th century in Germany
and Switzerland, and spread to other parts of Europe, and then to
North America [26]. In addition, there is a common perception that
it may be difficult to make green roofs aesthetically appealing in dry
climates. Lastly, North America and Europe have the largest con-
centration of research institutes, and thus most of the studies in
most fields are expected to result from these regions.
Plant survival and growth are affected by soil depth. Shallow and
therefore lightweight soils are often a desirable attribute for

Fig. 6. Change in the percentage over time (between 2001 and 2012) of all research Fig. 7. Distribution of papers (between 1969 and 2012) according to the number of
areas for which change over time was statistically significant. citations.
28 L. Blank et al. / Building and Environment 66 (2013) 23e28

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