Collaborative active roof design

Roofs play an essential role in buildings. Their value and impact often significantly surpass the cost ratio they represent in the total investment cost of the building. Traditionally, roofs have a protecting function and their basic design has changed little over hundreds of years. Nowadays however, they are increasingly used as preferred location for mounting additional functions such as photovoltaic systems, roof lights, ventilation devices, insulation and safety devices. The roof will contain more and more aspects which are strongly related with the comfort of the building as a whole. Looking in a wider context, the build environment is dominated by the circumstances related to energy use. A wide variety of new products, such as photovoltaic (PV) systems and solar collectors, roof lights, ventilation devices and insulation are introduced as adaptable elements related to the roof. Many problems arouse in implementing these products or combinations of products into the total roof, the roofing industry and the integration into the building design. Introduction of a broader variety of products causes a more complex process of designing and engineering, to be organized and developed with more participants with different backgrounds. These recent developments lead in practice up to a number of sticking points: - The new products have been seldom developed on the roof to be applied. For this reason there are no uniform standards and building specific performance assess. For this reason frequently own solutions are developed, which have to be adapted on the site itself. - Good products are installed by not-qualified people. This leads to leakage caused by rain or snow, but also to wind damage and condensation problems