Adelaide is the capital city of the driest state in Australia and it currently faces three major challenges, namely urbanisation growth, water scarcity and climate change. The consequence of these threats puts more stress on the urban water cycle and increases metropolitan temperatures through urban heat island effects. Introducing green infrastructure through water sensitive urban design is one of the solutions to reduce the harmful impacts of urbanisation while providing additional amenity and water quality benefits for communities and the environment. This paper describes the results of a current research project that is investigating the water quantity and thermal benefits of two different types of green roofs, namely intensive and extensive. The study site consists of a series of small scale green roofs located at the University of South Australia’s Mawson Lakes campus. Laboratory and field investigations of rainfall and runoff confirm that green roofs can retain significant amounts of stormwater and can also mitigate the peak flow and attenuate the time of concentration. The thermal benefits of green roofs have also been investigated through two scenarios of cold and warm days. The outcomes indicate that the thermal variation of the media is less than surrounding areas and on cold days the media’s temperature is warmer than outside and on warm days it is cooler. Integrating green roofs into the built environments of Adelaide could work as a climate change adaption tool that could yield significant thermal benefits.

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