Journal of Cleaner Production 147 (2017) 589e602

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Journal of Cleaner Production

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro

Development of a simulation-based decision support workow for the

implementation of Building-Integrated Agriculture (BIA) in urban
contexts
Khadija Benis a, *, Christoph Reinhart b, Paulo Ferra
~o a
a
IN Center for Innovation, Technology and Policy Research, Instituto Superior T
ecnico, Avenida Rovisco Pais 1, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal
b
Building Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (School of Architecture Planning), 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Providing healthy food for the worlds growing urban population is a recognized global challenge and it is
Received 20 September 2016 likely that current modes of conventional, large-scale farming will over time be increasingly com-
Received in revised form plemented by local, urban farming practices. Apart from its acknowledged social benets, urban farming
23 January 2017
is also widely viewed as a more resource-efcient alternative to conventional remote farming. Especially
Accepted 23 January 2017
Available online 24 January 2017
indoor, soilless cultivation in urban areas is being portrayed as a particularly sustainable solution.
However, as this technique relies on controlled environments, its ongoing operation can be quite energy-
intensive and related carbon emissions should be carefully weighed against reduced emissions, such as
Keywords:
Performance-based design
those from transportation. To further this goal, this article presents a simulation-based environmental
Parametric simulation analysis workow for Building-Integrated Agriculture (BIA) in urban contexts, that includes detailed
Building-Integrated Agriculture (BIA) solar radiation, water and energy specic models. The aim of the workow is to guide the user through
Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) decision-making on the potentialities of implementing BIA in a given neighborhood while maximizing
Resource efciency crop yields and minimizing water and energy consumption. The workow was applied to three hi-tech
Global Warming Potential (GWP) urban farming scenarios in Lisbon, Portugal: a polycarbonate Rooftop Greenhouse (RG), a Vertical Farm
(VF) with windows and skylights on the top oor of a reinforced-concrete building as well as a
completely opaque VF with no penetration of natural light on the ground oor of a reinforced-concrete
building. Global Warming Potential (GWP) related to water, transportation and operational energy of
these three case studies were compared to GWP of (i) the currently existing supply chain for tomato, and
(ii) a hypothetical low-tech unconditioned rooftop urban farm. Results show that the RG and the top oor
VF had the best overall environmental performance, respectively cutting greenhouse gas emissions in
half and in three in comparison with the existing supply chain for tomato. By allowing this preliminary
assessment of alternative farm locations and properties, the workow provides the user with actionable
information for early-stage holistic assessment of BIA projects.
2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction users of nite resource-based goods and services whose produc-

By 2050, two thirds of the worlds population are projected to be
urban dwellers, adding a net 2.5 billion residents to cities world-
wide (United Nations, 2014). As urbanization progresses, sustain-
able development efforts increasingly focus on urban centers,
which are responsible for a signicant share of greenhouse gas
(GHG) emissions, both directly as emitters and indirectly as end-
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: khadija.benis@tecnico.ulisboa.pt (K. Benis), tito_@mit.edu
~o).
(C. Reinhart), ferrao@tecnico.ulisboa.pt (P. Ferra
tion has caused emissions elsewhere. The role of local governments
is fundamental in alleviating these challenges by translating na-
tional strategies into locally implemented policies. Urban planning
is a powerful tool that can help decision-makers to mitigate the
environmental impacts of cities not only through the design of low
or net-zero carbon districts, but also through urban renewal in-
terventions in existing districts where there is great potential for
improving the efciency of the building stock (UNECE, 2011).
Buildings account for around one-third of global CO2 emissions
(IEA-IPEEC, 2015) and therefore play a major role in any urban
resilience strategy. Building professionals are increasingly using
Building Performance Simulation (BPS) tools to predict and

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.01.130
0959-6526/ 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
590 K. Benis et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 147 (2017) 589e602
optimize a buildings resource use as soon as in the early-stage
design of retrot or new construction projects. More recently BPS
methods have been combined with performance-based parametric
and algorithmic design approaches which allow design teams to
rapidly test multiple design alternatives in order to optimize the
use of passive strategies to minimize energy use while providing
indoor comfort (e.g., Ercan and Elias-Ozkan, 2015; Konis et al., 2016;
Mahmoud and Elghazi, 2016). In combination with urban data sets,
these methods can now be expanded to multiple buildings and
even neighborhoods, allowing predictions regarding building en-
ergy use (Reinhart and Cerezo Davila, 2016) and outdoor comfort
under diverse urban design and climatic conditions (Turrin et al.,
2012; Bajsanski et al., 2015).
Mitigating resource consumption in the built environment is a
signicant step towards more resilient cities that could reach a new
dimension if coupled with sustainable local resource production. In
that spirit, performance-based parametric studies have recently
addressed the optimization of building-integrated solar energy
production (e.g., Amado and Poggi, 2014; Kanters and Davidsson,
2014). However, energy is not the only challenge of our urbaniz-
ing world. As urban areas are growing both in population and
surface, their infrastructural needs for transporting and distrib-
uting food are constantly spreading, pushing food production
further and further away from the urban consumer and generating
globalized food systems that contribute to 19e29% of global GHG
emissions (Vermeulen et al., 2012). In 2007, the American Planning
Association (APA) proclaimed a need to integrate food systems
planning into urban planning policies in order to address the
challenge of feeding the urban population (APA, 2007). As both food
supply systems and buildings have signicant environmental im-
pacts, it can be argued that their integration could lead to a reduced
aggregate environmental impact. The concept of Building Inte-
grated Agriculture (BIA) was coined by Theodore Caplow in 2007
(Caplow and Nelkin, 2007). It consists of the application of high-
performance greenhouse farming methods adapted for use on top
of or in buildings (Puri and Caplow, 2009), exploiting the synergies
between the built environment and the farming technology such as
reduced water use, more efcient waste management cycles and
building-integrated renewable energy sources. The approach of
producing food closer to where it is consumed has provoked
increasing interest over the last years as it is claimed to consider-
ably decrease fossil fuel consumption, improve food security, pro-
vide jobs locally, cut transportation costs and enhance energy
efciency in buildings as discussed by Gould and Caplow (2012) or
Benis and Ferrao (2016). BIA includes soilless culture methods, such
as hydroponic cultivation, a technology that does not use any land,
requires around ten times less water than conventional agriculture,
and leads to signicantly higher yields in smaller areas (Barbosa
et al., 2015).
Among the several existing forms of BIA, Rooftop Greenhouse
(RG) farming is the most popular since rooftops represent a
considerable unutilized urban area, and lightweight hydroponic
greenhouses do not necessitate any signicant structural rein-
forcement of the buildings (Caplow and Nelkin, 2007). Several
North American companies have already proven that signicant
amounts of food can be produced year-round for urban dwellers on
unutilized rooftops in dense urban settings where available and
affordable land is a rare commodity. Such facilities are generally set
on service buildings and consist of state-of-the-art greenhouses
with recirculating hydroponic systems and structures made of
glass, metal and aluminum (see Fig. 1, a. b.). RG farms are usually
equipped with backup lighting, rainwater-harvesting systems and
thermal screens. They are heated with natural gas or electricity
with potential backup through photovoltaic (PV) panels. Vertical
Farming (VF) is another form of BIA that consists of raising crops
Fig. 1. Examples of existing industrial Building-Integrated Agriculture (BIA) facilities. a.
b. Rooftop Greenhouses in Brooklyn, NY. Images: Gotham Greens. c.d. Vertical Farming
in Chicago, IL. Image: FarmedHere LLC.
indoors in multistory buildings within the urban context, in new
constructions or abandoned buildings (see Fig. 1, c. d.). Ecologist
Dickson Despommier claims the legitimacy of VF, arguing that
despite the environmental impacts of extracting construction ma-
terials for buildings for the simple purpose of agricultural produc-
tion, growing plant life within buildings would require less energy,
occupy less land, and generate less GHG emissions than some
cultivation methods on natural landscapes (Despommier, 2010).
To ensure optimal growing conditions for the crops, both of
these practices involve the articial control of light, temperature,
humidity and water cycles, and can therefore be highly energy
intensive, depending on local climatic conditions and specic
characteristics of the host building. These limitations notwith-
standing, BIA as a farming concept is claimed to be environmentally
more sustainable than conventional farming by reducing food
miles (Specht et al., 2014), minimizing land use and water con-
sumption (Sanye-Mengual et al., 2015) and improving yields
(Despommier, 2013).
Unfortunately, there are currently no tools available to sub-
stantiate whether higher yields and lower transportation distances
do indeed offset energy use intensity of BIA across farms typologies
(e.g., Rooftop open-air, Rooftop Greenhouses, Vertical Farms),
across foodsheds and their associated food miles, and across
climate conditions. The motivation for this work is therefore to
develop a simulation-based analysis framework to quantify envi-
ronmental impacts of BIA in urban contexts and compare them to
conventional cultivation in rural areas. Water use and energy use
for transportation and greenhouse operation are included in this
analysis. As a proof of concept, the framework is applied to three
hypothetical building-integrated urban farms with varying levels of
environment control located in the city of Lisbon, Portugal, which
were compared to conventional, industry-sized rural farming and
to a hypothetical, low-tech rooftop farm.
The manuscript is organized as follows: Section 2 presents the
simulation workow and case studies. Section 3 shows the results
of the simulations, which are further discussed in Section 4. Finally,
conclusions are presented in Section 5.
2. Materials and methods
A performance-based simulation workow was developed, us-
ing the architectural 3D modeling program Rhinoceros 5.0
(McNeel, 2016) along with its graphical algorithm editor plug-in
Grasshopper. The latter enables the use of numerous environ-
mental analysis plug-ins such as Diva-for-Rhino (Jakubiec and
Reinhart, 2011) that are based on the validate daylighting and
thermal simulation engines DAYSIM and EnergyPlus. The aim of the
 K. Benis et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 147 (2017) 589e602
workow is to give the user actionable feedback for design
decision-making while implementing BIA in a given neighborhood.
The workow consists of the following ve successive steps: (1)
Site description; (2) Farm builder; (3) Operation model; (4) Plant
growth and water models; (5) Results visualization and model
adjustments (see Fig. 2).
Simulation outputs include food production, water use, energy
use. The ve phases of the workow are described below. As VF,
contrarily to RG, refers to indoor farming that does not necessarily
imply a greenhouse-type envelope, the modeled BIA space will be
hereunder referred to as the urban farm.
2.1. Phase 1: site description
During site description, standard environmental simulation in-
puts are provided including local climatic conditions and sur-
rounding urban geometry. For the former, an EnergyPlus Weather
le (EPW format) is imported from the EnergyPlus weather
database (EnergyPlus, 2016), containing the annual climate data of
the project location. For the latter, the 3D model of the urban area in
focus can be either imported from GIS or LiDAR or manually
generated within CAD. As shown in existing literature, it is crucial
to integrate the urban context into the model to ensure more ac-
curate results since the geometry of surrounding buildings deci-
sively impacts solar heat gains and/or daylighting, and therefore
the performance of the simulated building (Samuelson et al., 2016).
2.2. Phase 2: Farm builder
The Farm builder sub-model consists of selecting the geometry
Fig. 2. Simulation workow for BIA in urban contexts.
591
of the urban farm and the crop species to be grown, in order to
obtain the required growing conditions that will serve as inputs for
phases 3 and 4.
2.2.1. Geometry denition
A simple geometry in the form of a box is modeled at a chosen
location for the urban farm, i.e., on a rooftop or at any chosen
building oor. The Farm builder decomposes this geometry into
components of the urban farm, i.e., its footprint and envelope, to
which it affects window-to-wall ratios (WWR) that vary according
to the type of urban farm that has been selected, i.e., RG or VF.
2.2.2. Crop selection
Photoperiodism is the response of plants to changes in the
photoperiod, i.e., in the relative length of daylight and night, to
adapt to seasonal changes in their environment. It is one of the
most signicant and complex aspects of the interaction between
plants and their environment as it represents a key factor con-
trolling their development. For a simple yet reliable model, this
research only considered day-neutral plants e such as broccoli,
Brussel sprout, cabbage, cantaloupe, cucumber, eggplant, grape,
kohlrabi, pepper, strawberry, tomato and watermelon e which do
not initiate owering based on photoperiodism, but after attaining
a certain overall developmental stage, or in response to environ-
mental stimuli. Among these species, the most commonly grown in
greenhouses are vegetables with medium thermal requirements,
such as tomato, pepper, cucumber, melon, watermelon, marrow,
green bean and eggplant (Castilla and Baeza, 2013). These plants
can adapt to temperatures ranging from 17 to 28  C, with a mini-
mum limit of 12  C and a maximum limit of 32  C (Nisen et al.,
592 K. Benis et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 147 (2017) 589e602

Table 1 photons carry too much energy and can damage plant cells. At
Geometry and crop specications input into the Farm Builder. longer wavelengths, energy is insufcient for triggering photo-
Geometry synthesis. It is interesting to note that plants thus have a similar
Brep component (Box)
action spectrum as the human eye which is why the RADIANCE-
based annual daylight simulation program Daysim is used in this
Construction materials
model through the Diva-for-Rhino Grasshopper plug-in (Reinhart
Thickness (mm)
U-Value (W/m2/K) and Walkenhorst, 2001).
Light transmissivity (%) PAR is also called the Daily Light Integral (DLI), expressed in mol/
Window to wall ratios m2/day, as a cumulative measurement of the total number of
North, East, South, West, Roof (%)
photons that reach a plant during the daily photoperiod, i.e., the
Crop (e.g., period of time each day during which natural or articial light is
Tomato) available to generate photosynthesis. Values of PAR for optimal
Spatial arrangement (Pamungkas growth of the selected crops were found in Dorais (2003). In
et al., 2014) controlled environments, PAR from available daylight is usually
Plant density (plants/ 4
complemented with PAR from supplemental articial light
m2)
Canopy height (m) 2 eespecially in winter when days are shortere in order to reach the
Leaf Area Index (LAI) // 2.8 PAR that is required by the crop to achieve optimal growth
Light (Dorais, 2003)
throughout the year:
Photoperiod (h) 13 (Schwarz et al.,
2014)
Photosynthetically Active (mol/m2/ 20 PARCrop  PARDaylight PARSup (1)
Radiation (PAR) day)
Radiation Use Efciency (g/MJ) 20 where PARCrop is the light requirement for optimal growth of the
(RUE)
crop (mol/m2/day); PARDaylight is the available daylight measured at
Climate control (Kittas et al., the canopy of the plants (mol/m2/day); PARSup is the supplemental
2013)
articial lighting needed in addition to available daylight in order to
Minimum temperature (oC) 17
Maximum temperature (oC) 28 reach optimal growth conditions for the crop (mol/m2/day).
Minimum humidity (%) 60 To calculate PARDaylight, a grid of upward facing illuminance
Maximum humidity (%) 90 sensors with a resolution of 1 m  1 m is placed within the farm at
the top of the plant canopy, which varies according to the selected
crop. The simulation generates daylight illuminance values (in lux)
1988). for each sensor point, for each hour of the year.
Based on existing literature a database was compiled on Biologists quantify PAR by using the number of photons in the
growing requirements for various day-neutral plants including 400e700 nm range, that are received by a surface at each second,
minimum quantities for Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR), called the Photosynthetic Photon Flux Density (PPFD) and
ambient temperature and relative humidity ranges. Once a crop expressed in mmol/m2/s. Equation (2) is therefore applied to
species is selected, the Farm Builder ts a plant-specic spatial convert the available daylight illuminance values from lux to mmol/
arrangement within the geometry of the urban farm (see Table 1). m2/s:
These properties were set following a review of existing practices in
greenhouse hydroponic cultivation.
1 PPF Sunlight
Illuminance  PPFD (2)
2.3. Phase 3: operation model
54 Lux

where Illuminance is the daylight illuminance value (lux); 54 is the

Regardless of their geographic location, indoor cultivation sys-
tems involve essential environment control components that in-
uence plant growth to a varying degree, depending on their
complexity and provided control (Kittas et al., 2013). Operational
energy use for space heat, cooling, supplemental lighting and
equipment load from pumps etc. therefore account for a signicant
share of operational costs and carbon emissions of a BIA farm.
Within our workow, we are using the US Department of Energys
EnergyPlus whole building thermal simulation engine to model
operational energy use in the urban farms. The simulations are set
up and run through the Archsim Grasshopper component which
forms part of the DIVA-for-Rhino v4 suite. For that purpose, the
urban farm geometry for Phase 2 serves as an input to the operation
model.
2.3.1. Supplemental lighting schedule
Light quantity (intensity over a given period of time) and quality
(spectral distribution) have decisive impact on plant growth
(Dorais, 2003). Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR) is a
concept used to describe radiation in wavelengths useful for
photosynthesis of plants, accepted to be wavelengths between 400
and 700 nm (Sager and Mc Farlane, 1997). At shorter wavelengths,
constant to convert sunlight Photosynthetic Photon Flux (PPF) to
lux (Thimijan and Heins, 1983); PPFD is the Photosynthetic Photon
Flux Density (mmol/m2/s).
Subsequently, these values are converted to PAR:
84600 s 1 mol
PPFD   PARDaylight (3)
1 day 106 mmol
where PARDaylight is the number of photons from available daylight
that reach the plant on each photoperiod (mol/m2/day).
Based on the difference between the optimal PAR of the selected
crop species and these hourly results, the decit of PAR will
represent the needs of supplemental articial lighting that will
serve as an input in the thermal model, in the form of a lighting
schedule for the whole year.
Unlike vegetative crops, fruiting crops like tomatoes require a
lower PAR in the vegetative growth stage, i.e., in the early stage of
the plants development, than in the fruiting phase (Schwarz et al.,
2014). However, for simplication purpose, this proof of concept
model considers average PAR requirements for the crops through
their overall development process.
 K. Benis et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 147 (2017) 589e602
2.3.2. Thermal model
2.3.2.1. Construction materials. According to the type of urban farm
that was selected and to its location, structural specicities and
construction materials are associated with the thermal model. For
RG farms, structure and covering materials can be chosen from a
selection of typical materials widely used in greenhouses. For VF,
envelope materials are set according to the host building. Material
properties such as thermal conductivity and light transmissivity are
embedded in the material selection.
2.3.2.2. Loads. Loads of the urban farm include:
- Occupancy: a density of workers expressed in ppl/m2 and an
occupancy schedule were set in the model, documented by
existing practices in commercial greenhouse hydroponic culti-
vation facilities, provided by Portuguese growers;
- Equipment: loads associated to automated irrigation systems
were input to the model, i.e., power capacity and irrigation
schedule;
- Lighting: as mentioned previously, the optimal supplemental
light to be provided to a plant varies according to the crop
species and its DLI. Based on available PARDaylight measurements
from section 2.3.1 and on PAR requirements of the selected crop,
a specic schedule for supplemental light is input to the model.
Higher lighting requirements are observed in winter, when
photoperiods are shorter. Depending on geographic location and
light levels, the contribution of heat from the lighting system to
the overall heating requirements can vary signicantly. In a
greenhouse in Quebec where 120 mmol/m2/s were used for a
16 h photoperiod, this contribution was found to represent
around 25% (Dorais, 2003). Power density of the lighting system
(W/m2) varies according to the lighting source and the required
level of light. High-Pressure Sodium (HPS) lamps have tradi-
tionally been the most efcient lighting source in converting
electric energy into useful light for photosynthesis (Dorais,
2003). Some modern VF prototypes use even more efcient
solid state lighting solutions instead.
2.3.2.3. Climate control. Air conditioning is one of the major vari-
ables in controlled-environment cultivation, inuencing not only
crop growth, but also energy needs, which can account for a sig-
nicant share of operation costs and environmental impacts. Ac-
cording to the crop that was selected in Phase 2, heating and
cooling set points are input to the energy model. Additionally,
humidity control is activated, as the sample of species that are
considered here require an ambient relative humidity ranging be-
tween 60 and 90% (Kittas et al., 2013).
Adequate ventilation is another crucial variable for optimal
plant growth, especially during summer days, when both outside
temperature and solar radiation reach peak levels (Kittas et al.,
2013). For a climate-based calculation of ventilation requirements
of the urban farm, the following simplied version of the green-
house energy balance, as formulated by Kittas et al. (2005), was
used in the model:
0:0003 t Rs; o  max
Va (4)
DT
where Va is the ratio Q/Ag; Q is the ventilation ow rate (m3[air]
s1); Ag is the greenhouse ground surface area (m2); t is the
greenhouse transmission coefcient to solar radiation; Rs,o-max is
the outside solar radiation (W/m2), DT is the temperature differ-
ence between greenhouse and outside air (oC).
Based on hourly solar radiation and indoor/outdoor temperature
593
difference, this equation provides hourly air change rates, from
which a ventilation schedule is generated and input to the energy
model. The resulting minimum air change rates can be obtained
either by natural or forced ventilation. Since natural ventilation may
not be sufcient to provide the desired indoor environment under
certain climate conditions, a hybrid system is considered here.
While desired for plant growth, incident solar gains also
constitute a major heat source. Studies have shown that ventilation
may not be sufcient for extracting this excess energy during
summer days which is why active cooling methods might be
required as well (Baille, 1999). Shading, which can be achieved in
various ways (e.g., shade cloths, nets, partially reective screens,
paints), is usually an option, but can affect the performance of
ventilation if shading devices are internal (Kittas et al., 2013).
Therefore, external shades were integrated into the model and
associated with a shading schedule corresponding to the hours of
summer days with the highest values of solar radiation.
2.3.2.4. Energy use. Total yearly energy use is expressed in kg/m2/y,
and this value is disaggregated into four categories: (1) equipment;
(2) lighting; (3) heating; and (4) cooling. A stacked bar chart shows
the monthly distribution of this consumption.
2.4. Phase 4: plant growth and water models
2.4.1. Plant growth model
Existing research on horticultural crop growth (De Zwart, 1996;
Vanthoor, 2011) was used here as a basis of our model. Built upon
earlier crop yield models that simulate carbohydrate distribution to
plant organs, Vanthoors model is more accurate as it integrates the
effect of temperature variations on photosynthesis rate. The model
was validated for large temperature ranges. Besides temperature,
PAR and air-CO2 concentration also have decisive impact on
photosynthesis and therefore on plant growth (Vanthoor, 2011).
These three variables are used as inputs of the plant growth model
built withing Grasshopper to calculate net photosynthesis rate.
2.4.2. Evapotranspiration model
Crop water requirement corresponds to the volume of water
that a plant needs to maintain maximum rates of evapotranspira-
tion (ET). Climate-based models derived from the FAO-56 Penman-
Monteith standard method (Allen et al., 1998) are usually applied to
determine ET of greenhouse crops (Fynn et al., 1993; Baille et al.,
1994; Fernandez et al., 2010). Stanghellinis climate and crop-
based model, which was established to be the more reliable for
predicting ET in controlled-environment high-tech greenhouses
(Prenger et al., 2002; Villarreal-Guerrero et al., 2012), was built here
within Grasshopper. The equation for hourly estimates of reference
ET (ET0, in mm/h) was derived from the form published in a pre-
vious study that constructed Stanghellinis model within the
MATLAB/Simulink environment (Pamungkas et al., 2014):
VPD $ r $ cp
1
D $Rn  G Kt $
ET0 2 $LAI $ $  ra (5)
l rc
D g$ 1
ra
where ETo is the reference ET (mm day1 and mm h1 for a daily
and hourly basis, respectively); LAI is the Leaf Area Index in m2
m2; l is the latent heat of vaporization in MJ kg1; D is the slope of
the saturation pressure curve in kPa oC1; Rn is the net radiation in
MJ m2 h1; G is the soil heat ux in MJ m2 h1; Kt is a unit
conversion (86,400 s d1 for ETo in mm d1; 3600 s h1 for ETo in
mm h1); VPD is the vapor pressure decit in kPa; r is the atmo-
spheric density in kg m3; cp is the specic heat of air in MJ k1
594 K. Benis et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 147 (2017) 589e602

o 1
C ; g is the psychrometric constant in MJ kg1; ra is the aero-
dynamic resistance in s m1; and rc is the canopy resistance in s
m1.
The calculated average evapotranspiration per plant (ET0)
monthly values are then multiplied by the plant density, which
varies with the selected crop, in order to obtain a result expressed
in l/m2. This value is increased by an additional 10% to account for
the efciency of drip irrigation systems (Abou Hadid, 2013). Using
the result in combination with the previously estimated value of
the yield (in kg/m2), an estimate of total water use can also be
expressed in liters per kilograms of produce per year (l/kg/y).
2.5. Phase 5: results visualization and model adjustments
The workow was implemented in a Grasshopper script that
includes a simple dashboard view of the simulation results for three
categories: (1) yearly food yield per square meter; (2) monthly
water use per square meter; and (3) monthly energy use per square
meter. The simulations can be iteratively run to optimize results
according to specic project-related performance criteria.
2.6. Case studies
The simulation workow was applied to case studies located in
the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA), which has a Subtropical-
Mediterranean climate (Csa, Ko ppen climate classication).
Table 2 shows the simulation settings of the case study models.
Three different building-integrated hydroponic urban farms
(Farms 2, 3 and 4) were assessed against two low-tech alterna-
tives: (i) a conventional cultivation facility in a rural context,
which illustrates current food production (Farm 0); and (ii) a
hypothetical urban rooftop farm, which represents an interme-
diate scenario, where conventional cultivation is moved into the
metropolitan area (Farm 1). All the case studies have approxi-
mately the same footprint area and the same volume, the main
differences between them being related to their construction
properties, WWRs and climate control levels. For optimal natural
light transmission, the farms were designed with an East to West
(E-W) orientation, as recommended in the literature for Medi-
terranean latitudes (Castilla and Baeza, 2013). This orientation
benets natural ventilation in Lisbon, where prevailing winds are
northerly.
Tomato was selected as a crop, as Portugal is the 15th largest
tomato producer worldwide (FAOSTAT, 2012) and given the vast
existing literature about controlled-environment soilless produc-
tion of tomato.
2.6.1. Baseline model e Farm 0
The baseline model represents the current situation in Portugal,
where 70% of national consumption of tomato comes from do-
mestic production while the remaining 30% are imported, mainly
from Spain (over 90%) and Northern Africa (Instituto Nacional de
Estatstica, 2014). In 2013, 91% of domestic tomato was produced
in rural ground-based greenhouses, which is the most common
practice in the Mediterranean region for this crop, and was there-
fore considered here.
2.6.1.1. Farm typology. For domestic production, properties of the
greenhouse were assumed to correspond to the most common
characteristics of conventional greenhouses in Portugal as reported

Table 2
Case studies assumptions and simulation settings.

Baseline (rural) Urban Farm 1 Urban Farm 2 Urban Farm 3 Urban Farm 4

1. SITE SELECTION
Typology Low-tech greenhouse Low-tech greenhouse High-tech RG High-tech VF High-tech VF
Location Ground Rooftop Rooftop Top oor Ground oor
Cultivation technique On-soil On-Soil NFT Hydroponics NFT Hydroponics NFT Hydroponics
Crop period (months) 9 9 12 12 12
Transp. Distance (km) 555.6 419 30 30 30
2. FARM BUILDER
Footprint (m2) 864.0 852.0 867.0
Height (m) 4.0 4.0 4.0
Volume (m3) 3456.0 3408.0 3468.0
WWR North (%) 85.0 40.0 0.0
WWR East (%) 85.0 0.0 0.0
WWR South (%) 85.0 40.0 0.0
WWR West (%) 85.0 0.0 0.0
WWR Roof (%) 85.0 40.0 0.0
3. DAYLIGHTING
Natural daylight Yes Yes No
Lamps HPS 400 HPS 400 HPS 400
4. ENERGY
4.1. CONST. MAT.
4.1.1. STRUCTURE
Material Wood Wood Steel Concrete Concrete
Thickness (mm) 150.0 300.0 300.0
4.1.2. WINDOWS
Material Plastic lm Plastic lm Polycarbonate Standard glass No windows
Thickness (mm) 66.0 4.0 //
U-Value (W/m2K) 2.7 6.0 //
Light trans. (%) 91.0 82.0 //
4.1.3. SHADING
Material XLS 10 Revolux // //
Light trans. (%) 87.0 // //
4.2. CLIMATE CONT.
Nat. Ventilation On On On On Off
Mech. Ventilation Off Off On On On
 K. Benis et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 147 (2017) 589e602
by national statistics (Instituto Nacional de Estatstica, 2002), i.e., a
wooden structure with a plastic lm envelope, no supplemental
articial lighting and no climate control system besides natural
ventilation. Similarly, imported off-season tomatoes were assumed
to be produced in Spain and Morocco under unconditioned plastic
greenhouses. Therefore, characteristics of the farms were assumed
to be similar for imported tomatoes.
2.6.1.2. Yield. This type of low-tech unconditioned greenhouse
cannot be operated through the warm summer months. It only
allows for a crop period of nine months, resulting in a yearly yield of
16.5 kg/m2 (Sanye-Mengual et al., 2015).
2.6.1.3. Water use. A Water Use Efciency (WUE) of 25 kg/m3 was
measured for tomato crops grown in unconditioned traditional
plastic greenhouses in the Mediterranean region (Gallardo et al.,
2013), representing a water use of 40 L per kilogram of produce.
2.6.1.4. Energy use. In these greenhouses, energy use mainly stems
from irrigation and add up to about 0.13 kWh of electricity per kg of
tomato (Payen et al., 2015), This electricity use was converted to
greenhouse gas emissions according to conversion factors for
Portugal, Spain and Morocco (Daccache et al., 2014).
2.6.1.5. Transportation to the city. Both domestic and imported
tomatoes reach the city of Lisbon through road transportation.
The average distance traveled by one kilogram of tomato from the
farm to the city was determined, based on the methodology
applied in a previous article, combining data on transportation
modes and distances, obtained from agriculture and trade na-
tional statistics (Benis and Ferrao, 2016). GHG emissions (in
kgCO2eq) related to the transportation of one kilogram of tomato
were then estimated:
GHGTransport E  Freighttkm (6)
where E is the Emission factor for refrigerated truck (kgCo2eq/tkm);
and Freighttkm represents the transport of one ton of tomatoes over
a distance of one kilometer (tkm).
2.6.2. Low-tech BIA model e Farm 1
Urban Farm 1 is a low-tech rooftop farm with on-soil tomato
production and the same construction and conditioning properties
as the baseline model. Similarly, it allows for a crop period of nine
months leading to a yield of 16.5 kg/m2/year and requiring 40 L of
water per kilogram of produce. Farm 1 was assumed to be located
within the Lisbon Metropolitan area, which reduces average
transportation distance. Assuming that the urban farmed crop
covers all urban needs while in sessions, it was assumed that only
the 30% of the tomato comes from abroad and travel the same
distance as in the baseline model.
2.6.3. High-tech BIA models e Farms 2, 3 and 4
Urban Farms 2, 3 and 4 are high-tech building-integrated
cultivation facilities that allow for continuous year-round crop
production. These three controlled-environment farms were
assumed to be using the hydroponic Nutrient Film Technique
(NFT) and to be equipped with water pumps and supplemental
articial lighting. Additionally, Farms 2 and 3 were assumed to be
equipped with a hybrid ventilation system, while Farm 4 has a
mechanical ventilation system. Urban Farm 2 is a polycarbonate-
covered industrial-type rooftop greenhouse with a steel struc-
ture located on the top of an ofce building. Urban Farm 3 is an
indoor facility on the top oor of a reinforced-concrete aban-
doned factory building, with windows on North and South
595
facades and skylights on the roof. Urban Farm 4 is an indoor farm
located in a warehouse with no penetration of natural light and
no natural ventilation, i.e., a black box growing facility with a
fully controlled environment.
3. Results
3.1. Food
Optimal growing conditions of NFT hydroponic tomato were
assumed to be achieved year-round in the three conditioned urban
farms, with an available PAR of 20 mol/m2/day. Under these con-
ditions, yearly yields of 76 kg/m2 are achieved in Urban Farm 2;
74 kg/m2 in Urban Farm 3; and 74 kg/m2 in Urban Farm 4. Looking
at per capita tomato consumption (Instituto Nacional de
Estatstica, 2014), this production corresponds to the yearly con-
sumption of 7 Lisbon dwellers. In contrast, unconditioned green-
houses provide 1.6 dwellers consumption per square meter
(See Fig. 3).
3.2. Water
According to the simulation, achieving these yields under Lisbon
climate requires 8.7 L of water per kilogram of produce in Urban
Farm 2, 8.3 L of water per kilogram of produce in Urban Farm 3, and
7.7 L of water per kilogram of produce in Urban Farm 4. The slightly
higher water consumption in Urban Farm 2 is due to the charac-
teristics of its envelope, which allows for higher heat gains,
resulting in higher indoor temperatures than in Urban Farms 3 and
4, and therefore higher evapotranspiration levels.
3.3. Energy
A Ground Source Heat Pump was considered for providing HVAC
to the urban farms. The Coefcient of Performance (COP) of heating
was assumed to be 3.1 and the COP of cooling was assumed to be
3.93 (ASHRAE, 2015). Urban Farm 2 has the best performance in
terms of overall energy use, with an annual site energy use of 53
kWh/m2. Total energy consumption in Urban Farm 3 is higher,
reaching 81 kWh/m2/year, while Urban Farm 4 has the highest
energy consumption, attaining 242 kWh/m2/year. The consump-
tion mix is different for each farm, as the amount of energy that
goes to articial lighting, heating and cooling varies considerably in
each case (see Fig. 4).
3.3.1. Lighting
Since orientation and volumes of the three urban farms were
kept similar, their urban context, WWRs and the light trans-
missivity of their envelopes are the main factors that inuence their
energy use for articial lighting. High Pressure Sodium (HPS) lamps
are widely used in commercial hydroponic facilities and were
therefore used here.
Urban Farm 2 is located on a rooftop that is sufciently high not
to receive any shade from its surrounding buildings. Given the
higher WWR of its ve faces and therefore the higher overall light
transmissivity of its envelope, the farm achieves the lowest energy
consumption for supplemental lighting, i.e., 21 kWh/m2/year.
Natural daylight that penetrates into the greenhouse from May to
September is sufcient to satisfy the optimal PAR requirements of
tomato, despite the fact that the shading is applied for eight hours
per day during these months.
Urban Farm 3 has lower WWRs and therefore more sup-
plemental lighting is necessary. Consumption reaches 72 kWh/
m2/year; no supplemental lighting is needed from May to
August.
596 K. Benis et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 147 (2017) 589e602

Fig. 3. Yearly tomato yield of the four case studies compared to the baseline model.

Urban Farm 4 does not receive any natural light. A power in-
tensity of 47 W/m2 is necessary through photoperiods of 13 h
during the whole year, resulting in an energy consumption of 232
kWh/m2/year for supplemental lighting.
As previously mentioned, the daylight model (i.e., Phase 3 of the
workow) provides the supplemental lighting requirements, which
are then input into the thermal model in the form of a lighting
schedule. This supplemental light can constitute an important
source of heat and has therefore an impact on climate control needs
of the farm.
3.3.2. Heating
Tomato is a medium thermal requirements species that grows in
temperatures ranging between 17 and 28  C (Castilla and Baeza,

Urban Farm 2 Urban Farm 3 Urban Farm 4

Equipment 6 6 6
Ligh ng 21 72 232
Hea ng 19 9 0
Cooling 78 0 16
ENERGY LOADS (kWh/m2) 124 87 254
ENERGY USE (KWh/m2) * 53 81 242
* Hea ng COP = 3.1; Cooling COP = 3.93
Fig. 4. Disaggregation of Energy Use Intensity (EUI) in the three conditioned urban farms.
 K. Benis et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 147 (2017) 589e602
2013). In order to maintain indoor temperatures in these ranges,
heating is required in Urban Farms 2 and 3, while it is not necessary
in Urban Farm 4.
In Urban Farm 2, the use of heating in January and December
results in a consumption of 6 kWh/m2/year. In Urban Farm 3,
heating is necessary in January, February and December, resulting
in a consumption that is 52% lower than in Urban Farm 2, reaching
only 2.9 kWh/m2/year.
3.3.3. Cooling
Keeping indoor temperatures within the optimal ranges for to-
mato requires cooling in Urban Farms 2 and 4, while no cooling is
needed in Urban Farm 3.
Greenhouse effect has an adverse impact in Urban Farm 2
during the summer months of July and August, where average
indoor temperatures are around 27  C, which is closer to the
upper limit of optimal temperature ranges. Production is still
possible under these conditions since tomato has a maximum
limit of 32  C (Nisen et al., 1988), but too many consecutive days
of high temperatures could affect the yield. Cooling requirements
in Urban Farm 2 reach a total of 78 kWh/m2/year, corresponding
to a consumption of 19.8 kWh/m2/year. Although indoor tem-
peratures do not reach such high peaks in Urban Farm 4, cooling
remains necessary in July and August, constituting an energy load
of 16 kWh/m2/year, i.e. a consumption of 4.1 kWh/m2/year, 80%
lower than in Urban Farm 2.
3.4. Global Warming Potential
In order to compare Global Warming Potential (GWP) caused by
different resources used by the farms across the ve case studies,
GHG emissions related to water, energy and transportation were
calculated for each scenario (see Table 3).
While water use in conventional farming facilities is 4e5 times
higher than in hydroponic farms and transportation distances are
14e19 times longer (since year-round local production is not
feasible), operating the hydroponic urban farms requires 6 to 27
times more energy than operating conventional farms (see Fig. 5).
In the case of Lisbon, in spite of their energy consumption, Urban
Farms 2 and 3 have lower GHG emissions in terms of aggregated
water, energy and transportation emissions, than the currently
existing tomato supply system. On the other hand, a low-tech
unconditioned urban rooftop greenhouse (Farm 1) has also lower
GHG emissions than the current model, but still more emissions
than Farms 2 and 3, due to water use and transportation. Finally,
Farm 4 has the highest GWP due to its substantial lighting energy
needs.
Table 3
Water and energy-related GHG emissions of the ve scenarios.
Baseline
Water use l/kg 40.00
GHG emissions a kgCO2eq/kg 0.716
Electricity use kWh/kg 0.130
GHG emissions b kgCO2eq/kg 0.049
Transportation tkm 0.556
GHG emissions c kgCO2eq/kg 0.278
Total emissions kgCO2eq/kg 1.042
a
Emission factors for irrigation in Portugal (0.008), Spain (0.041) and Morocco (0.033) in kgCo2eq/l from Daccache et al. (2014).
b
Emission factors for electricity in Portugal (0.379), Spain (0.337) and Morocco (0.690) in kgCo2eq/kWh from IEA (2015).
c
Emission factor for refrigerated truck 0.5kgCO2eq/tkm.
597
4. Discussion
The goal of controlled-environment agriculture is to prolong
conventional open-eld growing periods towards year-round food
production and therefore increase protability. Nowadays, existing
technologies allow for cultivation of all horticultural crops in any
geographical region of the world. However, indoor production
demands signicant climate control measures to articially pro-
vide plants with optimal growing conditions. Therefore, it is
essential to keep in mind that while urban BIA is claimed to be
sustainable for cutting transportation distances, such energy-
intensive facilities may not be appropriate to any location, as the
former does not consistently offset the latter. The aim of this
research was to build and test a performance-based simulation
workow that allows to quantitatively assess resource consump-
tion of different types of BIA in urban contexts, by providing dis-
aggregated estimates of water and energy use for operation and
transportation. This section discusses the outcomes of this work,
which has shown the impacts of specic local conditions, but also
of farm typologies, on the performance of BIA in urban contexts.
Additionally, other environmental and economic aspects of urban
BIA are highlighted here.
4.1. A reliable framework to quantitatively assess BIA
The application of the workow to three potential urban
farms for tomato production located in the Lisbon Metropolitan
Area and the comparison of their environmental performance to
the current supply chain for tomato and to a hypothetical low-
tech urban farm, provided a notion of the typologies of BIA
that would best perform in this specic context. Historically,
greenhouse cultivation was used to grow heat-demanding crops
during winter in countries with temperate climate such as
Mediterranean countries, where the greenhouse effect has an
adverse impact during the warm season on the microclimate and
therefore on the yields (Castilla and Baeza, 2013). These con-
ventional Mediterranean greenhouses are unconditioned; crops
are therefore imported during the warmest months of the year.
Simulation results, which were found to be in line with existing
literature on indoor cultivation in Mediterranean regions (Kittas
et al., 2013), showed that claiming whether urban BIA is sus-
tainable or not depends on specic conditions of a given urban
food system, i.e., on the level of technology and efciency of the
existing cultivation facilities that are used as a reference, and on
the transportation mode and distance traveled by the crop to
reach the city. In fact, while water use has been established to be
systematically lower in hydroponic systems than in conventional
on-soil cultivation (Barbosa et al., 2015; Sanye-Mengual et al.,
2015), energy use related to transportation and to the operation
Farm 1 Farm 2 Farm 3 Farm 4
40.00 8.70 8.30 7.70
0.716 0.07 0.07 0.06
0.130 0.697 1.095 3.270
0.049 0.264 0.415 1.239
0.419 0.03 0.03 0.03
0.210 0.015 0.015 0.015
0.974 0.352 0.500 1.319
598 K. Benis et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 147 (2017) 589e602
Fig. 5. Comparative environmental performance of the ve scenarios.
of a farm is highly variable and dependent on local foodshed
characteristics, climate conditions, farm properties and targeted
productivity. The workow that was developed here constitutes
an integrated physical model that can be used for the quantita-
tive assessment of such potential BIA farms under any specic
conditions. The results from the Lisbon case study reveal that the
type of urban farm used leads to substantially varying emissions
and water usage and hence provides valuable information for
urban designers interested in developing holistic urban sustain-
ability solutions. On the other hand, whereas this case study
application assumes fully exposed rooftops, the workow
developed by the authors in Rhinoceros can be directly applied
as an urban design tool to test other scenarios: e.g., if the users of
the tool are interested in evaluating the crop yields in partially
shaded areas or if they want to design only partially glazed
farms.
4.2. Potential of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA) for self-
reliance in vegetables
In terms of food production, when compared to the currently
existing supply chain for tomato, BIA farms in Lisbon can lead to
efciency gains of a factor of four. This high productivity is both
due to the year-round production that is allowed by the
controlled environment, and to the higher plant density that is
supported by soilless culture systems. In order to better under-
stand in how far hydroponic production could cover total vege-
table consumption in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA) the
predictions based on the tomato simulations were extrapolated to
all main vegetable groups. Data on per capita vegetable con-
sumption was gathered from national statistics (Instituto Nacional
de Estatstica, 2014), disaggregated into the main categories of
vegetables according to the FAO classication (see Table 4). The
seven main categories of vegetables represent around 70% of total
vegetable consumption of a Lisbon dweller (92.3 kg/cap/year).
Conventional and potential yields of soilless culture systems for
these crops were collected from different sources (Willis, 1992;
Engindeniz and Gl, 2009; FAOSTAT, 2013; Tuzel, 2013; Sanye-
Mengual et al., 2015). Subsequently, the urban farm area
required to meet this demand was calculated. In order to assess
the availability of such an area in the urban fabric, a detailed
characterization of the land cover and the land use of the LMA
 K. Benis et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 147 (2017) 589e602 599

Table 4
Per capita demand for vegetables, yields of conventional and soilless cultures, required urban area for soilless culture to meet the demand, available urban area, and demand
met.

Vegetables Demanda Conventional yieldsb Soilless culture yields Urban area Demand met

kg/cap/yr kg/m2/yr kg/m2/yr Required Available %

2 2
m /cap m /cap

Tomato 10.4 16.5 (Sanye-Mengual et al., 2015) 70.0 0.15

Alliaceous 11.6 2.8 (FAOSTAT, 2013) 14.6 (Willis, 1992) 0.79
Brassicas 41.0 3.0 (FAOSTAT, 2013) 9.8 (Willis, 1992) 4.18
Lettuce and chicory 9.6 2.0 (FAOSTAT, 2013) 60.0 (Portuguese growers, 2016) 0.16
Edible roots 17.3 3.6 (FAOSTAT, 2013) 22.0 (Willis, 1992) 0.79
Cucumbers and gherkins 1.2 6.0 (Tuzel, 2013) 31.0 (Engindeniz and Gl, 2009) 0.04
Leguminous 1.2 2.1 (FAOSTAT, 2013) 7.0 (Willis, 1992) 0.17
Total 92.3 6.28 7.80 124.1%

Others 37.0
Total demand 129.3
a
(Instituto Nacional de Estatstica, 2014).
b
In the Mediterranean region.

was made using the European Urban Atlas (EU, 2011), which of-
fers pan-European comparable high-resolution GIS data for urban
areas. Using this data, all areas from the Land without current
use category were consolidated. These areas, including brown
elds (waste land or decommissioned former industrial areas)
and green elds (gaps in between new construction areas or
leftover land in the urban context) are located within the urban
fabric, have street access, and are waiting to be used or re-used.
As of 2015, 7.8 m2 of these areas are available per Lisbon resi-
dent and the use of these areas for BIA allow the LMA to locally
meet an impressive 124% of its demand for the seven main cat-
egories of vegetables. Year-round vegetable independence for
Lisbon is hence technically feasible.
4.3. Operational resource-use intensity across BIA typologies
This work showed that high-tech conditioned urban farms can
be more sustainable than conventional unconditioned greenhouses
for crop production under Mediterranean climates. In fact,
depending on the farm structure and its envelope properties (e.g.,
WWRs, materials), resource-efciency of different typologies of
urban farms can vary signicantly. While in terms of water use, we
reach efciency gains of a factor of four to ve in the conditioned
hydroponic farms (due to water efciency of soilless cultivation) in
comparison with conventional facilities, much more electricity is
used (due to climate control) than in the conventional system. On
the other hand, urban food production leads to signicant cuts in
transportation distances, which have been shown here to offset
GHG emissions of electricity consumption in some cases.
Among the three BIA typologies tested for an optimal yield of
soilless-grown tomato, the East/West-oriented Vertical Farm
located in a concrete factory building with windows on its North
and South facades and skylights on its rooftop was almost as ef-
cient as the polycarbonate Rooftop Greenhouse, requiring less
heating and no cooling. Therefore, indoor cultivation in abandoned
buildings with a masonry envelope can be a viable alternative to
greenhouses in Mediterranean regions, where controlled-
environment agriculture is currently performed in greenhouses.
This is explained by the fact that the greenhouse effect has an
adverse impact on indoor temperatures during the hottest months
of the year, resulting in high cooling requirements.
On the other hand, the urban farm with no penetration of nat-
ural daylight performs much worse than the RG, requiring 205% of
the energy needed in the greenhouse; 91% of this energy goes to
supplemental lighting. Therefore, indoor cultivation in warehouses
and other types of urban black boxes such as shipping containers,
as it is being increasingly implemented in North American cities,
does not appear to be a suitable option in Mediterranean regions,
where high radiation potential and mild temperatures should be
taken advantage of, by adjusting WWRs for an optimal trade-off
between natural daylight intercepted by the plants and heat
gains of the farm. On the other hand, it can be argued that more
efcient articial light sources should be assessed against HPS
lamps to decrease energy consumption related to supplemental
lighting in these facilities, or that lighting plays a role in heating the
farm and therefore reducing heating requirements. Both of these
questions related to improving the efciency of supplemental
lighting justify a further assessment of this typology of urban BIA
farm going forward.
Finally, year-round production within the metropolitan area
eliminates the need for imports, signicantly cutting the overall
distance traveled by food and therefore mitigating transportation-
related energy consumption. This work showed that GHG emis-
sions savings from these transportation cuts largely offset the
emissions caused by electricity consumption of Urban Farms 2 and
3, turning both of these solutions more sustainable than the current
supply chain for tomato. Large man-made urban growing envi-
ronments for plants can therefore lead to net savings in GHG
emissions, in comparison with conventional low-tech rural
cultivation.
4.4. Centralized food production vs renewable energy from solar
The largest share of GHG emissions in the urban BIA farms are
related to their high levels of electricity consumption. Their envi-
ronmental footprint could therefore be further mitigated by asso-
ciating clean renewable energy sources to these systems. As
previously mentioned, crops react to photoperiods, requiring cycles
that alternate periods of light and periods of darkness. Supple-
mental articial lighting is needed to ll the daily decit of light in
order to provide the plants with the minimum PAR levels that they
need for optimal growing conditions. The opaquer the envelope of
the farm is, the higher is the electricity consumption for supple-
mental lighting. As no lighting is required at night, BIA farming
systems align well with solar photovoltaic electricity production, in
terms of load overlap.
In an urban design class project developed at MIT through the
spring of 2016 (class 4.433 e Modeling Urban Energy Flows), an
600 K. Benis et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 147 (2017) 589e602
integrated mixed-use neighborhood with a gross oor area of
435,400 m2 for 17,500 occupants was designed on a 27 ha
decommissioned industrial urban site in Lisbon. The goal of the
project was programing the productive use of rooftops by maxi-
mizing onsite food production in Rooftop Greenhouses, with net
zero additional operational energy associated to these BIA systems.
Conservative numbers were used for estimating the average hy-
droponic yields, while solar PV energy yields were modeled for the
site. Results showed that by implementing Rooftop Greenhouses on
35.2% of the total available rooftop area and solar PV panels on the
remaining 64.8% of the area, 41% of local demand for vegetables
could be met without the need for additional operational energy for
the hydroponic plant production. However, this conict of dedi-
cating rooftops to solar energy generation vs food production is
already being solved with the emergence of new technologies such
as Greenhouse-Integrated Photovoltaics (GIPV). These new types of
commercial greenhouse panels not only allow the coexistence of
both power generation and agriculture, but also improve light
quality and increase electricity generation by absorbing green light
that plants dont absorb efciently, and converting it to red light
(Solaria, 2016). This wavelength-selective way of shading the crop
optimizes plant growth, as decreasing the intensity of green light
that falls onto crops decreases leaf temperature and therefore re-
duces stress. On the other hand, the enhanced red light not only
better matches photosynthetic response, but also maximizes the
output of the solar cells.
4.5. Early-stage optimization of operation costs of BIA systems
High-tech commercial-scale BIA systems not only involve high
investment costs, but also often lead to signicant operating costs
due to their energy bills (Thomaier et al., 2015). Therefore, opti-
mizing efciency of these systems through yields maximization
and water and energy savings is a key strategy for BIA projects to
thrive. This crucial need for efciency validates the necessity for
systematic preliminary feasibility studies to guide decision-
making in such capital-intensive projects. By allowing the user
to quickly simulate and compare productivity and resource in-
tensity of alternative scenarios, the workow presented here can
assist him in estimating operation costs of a BIA project as soon as
in its early-stage design phase. On the other hand, BIA farms in
urban contexts have a limitation in terms of area in comparison
with ground-based rural horticultural cultivation facilities, there-
fore providing smaller yields and higher unit costs of their urban
produce. Through parametric analysis, the workow allows the
user to quickly get a sense, in a given urban context, of the min-
imum viable area that a BIA system should have, or the kind of
crop that should be produced in order to guarantee economic
sustainability of the project.
4.6. Further assessment
The goal of this work was to provide a framework for an initial
evaluation of the performance of different BIA typologies, based
on climate, crops and geometry of the farm. The resulting urban
design workow serves the purpose of providing a preliminary
idea about the type of urban farm solution that should be further
assessed in a specic urban area. This framework is easy to use by
architects and urban planners, and constitutes a rst step towards
the economic assessment of BIA projects viability. As the next step
of a fully informed decision-making process, a life cycle perspec-
tive of the project should be considered by the user, in terms of
environmental impacts, where the construction and dismantle-
ment phases of the urban farm would be integrated. This full Life
Cycle Assessment (LCA) of different BIA typologies should
furthermore consider scenarios where operational energy of the
farms is provided by in-situ renewable energy sources, such as
integrated solar photovoltaic panels, and take account of land use
as an additional positive environmental impact related to the
implementation of BIA in urban contexts, where no land needs to
be converted into cropland. In terms of economic assessment,
impacts on local economy should be further assessed, such as
business opportunities and jobs created in urbanizing contexts
where rural jobs are becoming less attractive.
5. Conclusions
This article presented a performance-based workow model
for simulation of Building-Integrated Agriculture (BIA) in early-
stage architectural and/or urban design, incorporating daylight,
energy and water models. The aim of the workow is to guide the
user through decision-making on the potentialities of imple-
menting BIA in a given neighborhood while maximizing crop
yields and minimizing water and energy consumption. In addition
to climate data and geometry properties of the farm, specic
crops and their respective growing requirements can be selected,
allowing the user to test not only alternative locations and de-
signs, but also the adaptability of alternative species to local
conditions. The workow was applied to three hypothetical hi-
tech urban farms located in the city of Lisbon, a polycarbonate
Rooftop Greenhouse (RG), a Vertical Farm (VF) with windows and
skylights on the top oor of a reinforced-concrete building, and a
completely opaque VF with no penetration of natural light on the
ground oor of a reinforced-concrete building. Environmental
impacts of these three case studies were compared to those of (i)
the currently existing supply chain for tomato, and (ii) a hypo-
thetical low-tech unconditioned rooftop urban farm. For the same
crop and targeted production, the three urban BIA farms per-
formed differently, according to their geometries and constructive
specicities. Both the RG and the top oor VF had lower GWP
than the current supply chain of tomato for Lisbon or the hypo-
thetical low-tech urban rooftop alternative, cutting GHG emis-
sions respectively in three and in half. Therefore, while indoor
cultivation in Mediterranean regions is currently mainly per-
formed in greenhouses, transformation of abandoned buildings
esuch as decommissioned factoriese into Vertical Farms should
be further assessed, as thermal properties of their envelopes can
lessen heat losses and gains, thus reducing energy requirements
for climate control.
Acknowledgments
Generous support for this work has been provided by FCT
(Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation), under the pro-
gram MIT Portugal e Sustainable Energy Systems, through the
doctoral degree grant SFRH/BD/52306/2013. This work was
developed during a research visit by the main author at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, partially supported by the
InnoEnergy PhD School mobility grant. We would like to show our
gratitude to the researchers of the Building Technology Lab at the
School of Architecture and Planning, and to the team of the Open
Agriculture Initiative at the MIT Media Lab, for the time spent
among them and for their valuable insights that greatly improved
the manuscript.
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