Building integrated agriculture information modelling (BIAIM): An integrated approach towards urban agriculture

Abstract

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...

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