The latest in CSIC’s monthly series of Smart Infrastructure blogs shines a light on smart urban farming.
The blog, titled ‘Where does your garden grow – can smart urban farming feed growing cities?’, presents a collaborative live project that places data and physics front and centre to help an underground urban farm grow smart.
Cities are growing – according to the United Nations, by 2050 two out of every three people are likely to be living in cities or urban centres – bringing greater pressure for urban areas to provide what people need, including a constant and sustainable supply of food. Growing and delivering food has an associated carbon cost – particularly in the transportation of goods. Exploring new ways to feed a city that minimises our carbon footprint and ensures energy use is kept to a minimum is of increasing importance.
Putting data front and centre of this business has delivered more information for better decision-making. Dr Rebecca Ward, Research Associate, the Alan Turing Institute
The Smart Infrastructure Blog by Dr Rebecca Ward, a Research Associate atthe Alan Turing Institute presents a collaborative project with the Energy Efficient Cities initiative (EECi) and CSIC showcasing a smart and sustainable approach to help improve the efficiency, productivity and profitability of urban farming, working with the world’s first underground farm, Growing Underground, which is located 33 metres below the pavements of London’s Clapham High Street in former World War II air raid shelters. The farm produces microgreens from an area roughly the size of a tennis court, hydroponically (without soil) using carpet cut-offs destined for landfill. Dr Ward writes: “Our research team has worked with the commercial concern for the past seven years to help it realise its goal of becoming a zero-carbon food company. From the start the owners recognised that data would play an important part in future success and researchers began by installing sensors throughout the 528m² area to collect data about everything contributing to the operation of the farm and its yield.”
Alongside the development of a digital twin, a physics model was used to test and evaluate environment scenarios in ways that are not possible in real time because the farm is a commercial entity and operations cannot be interrupted. Dr Ward writes: “Putting data front and centre of this business has delivered more information for better decision-making. This is of value to Zero Carbon Farms as they expand the Growing Underground farm and explore different crop types but it also points to the potential of different ‘greenhouse’ spaces in cities – discarded, empty or re-purposed buildings – to grow the food we need sustainably and locally.”
Read the Smart Infrastructure Blog ‘Where does your garden grow – can smart urban farming feed growing cities?’ by Dr Rebecca Ward here.