Urbanisation is transforming human societies in many ways. Besides bringing benefits to people in cities, it also has negative impacts such as food security. One way to meet the challenge is urban agriculture; however, traditional agricultural practices are not suitable within urban areas due to limited availability of land. Therefore, the alternative option is to grow crops inside or on top of buildings, e.g. building integrated agriculture (BIA). But, there is limited research and information available for designers and planners to design such buildings. The presented research project bridges the gap between agriculture and architecture by proposing a building integrated agriculture information modelling tool in integration with Building information modelling. The plugin tool has data on plants' requirements and automatic response to environmental factors. Environmental factors include temperature, light, water, nutrients, air, humidity, spacing and support. In this paper, seasonal tomato is selected as a reference crop, and the impact of environment (temperature, light, water, nutrients and spacing) on its health is discussed and simulated for germination stage. The undertaken project contributes to the concept of BIA and BIM maturity level, which would help to design an optimum environment building for plants.Historically, these practices have been used in many countries, while developed countries have also started taking interest due to increasing food security problems [19]. However, in urban regions, available land is limited therefore UA can be in two ways: open rooftop farming; or high-tech controlled environment agriculture (CEA) [20], which provides ultimate results by providing optimum conditions [21].CEA has been adopted to cultivate off-season crops and producing high-quality crops [22]. Though, for controlled environment building integrated agriculture (BIA), there is limited literature available. The key issue is the structural design of such modern BIA design; where the information on the plant-environment relationship is not available on state-of-the-art building designing tools [23][24][25]. For such practices to be possible, experts from various disciplines, i.e. agriculture, agronomy, architecture, urban planning, engineering, economics and public health will have to come together and work collaboratively [26]. Such intelligent collaborative platforms are also known as Building information modelling (BIM). BIM is a methodology, comprised of processes to generate and manage the information of building or group of buildings [27]. BIM can also be defined as "modelling technology and associated set of procedures to produce, communicate and analyse models" [28]. BIM tools get people and information working together effectively and efficiently through defined processes and technology [29]. Most of the developed countries have been using these tools for improvement in productivity and cost-savings throughout all stages of architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) industry [30]. Therefore, BI...

Purpose The UN statistics show that the world’s population is expected to be nine billion by the 2050. As a result, the food production must also be raised to 70 per cent or more. Vertical farming (VF) is an innovative and alternative approach to meet the challenges; however, its management will also be a challenge. This paper, therefore, shares the understanding of future food challenges and Building Information Modelling (BIM) and its application to manage the facility. Design/methodology/approach A conceptual digital prototype of a VF is developed in a BIM environment using design science. First, the data are collected from literature review and then analysed and simulated for optimum conditions in a BIM-enabled digital prototype. Findings The results showed that BIM to manage a VF has not been researched or explored yet. However, BIM has proven its numerous benefits to the architecture, engineering and construction and facility management industries, and it is a powerful solution to design and manage VF to solve future food production problems. Originality/value There is a very limited research on VF in the literature, and BIM for VF is also not discussed or researched yet. The originality and value of this research stems from both expanding BIM horizons and designing and managing VF.

The term of Building Information Modelling (BIM) has become ubiquitous in construction industry of China. The purpose of this study is to investigate implementation of BIM in construction industry in China, including the BIM strategy, the BIM standards, and the projects that utilized BIM and so on. The methodology for this paper is based on a literature review of the strategy, the standards in relation to BIM and a detailed case study of 30 BIM implementation projects in construction industry in China. A range of key factors that affected the BIM implementation and the initiatives to accelerate the BIM development in China were found in this paper, such as the BIM standards system, the BIM commercial model, BIM contribution to sustainability and so on. From the research findings, some conclusions and recommendations were drawn to explore effective ways to promote the BIM implementation in China.