Research objectives
The urban heat island, which is an urban area that is significantly warmer than its surrounding, adversely affects human well-being in modern cities by reducing thermal comfort and damaging the human health. Covering building walls with plants has been suggested as a nature-based solution to decrease the urban heat island effects. However, covering high rise buildings (HRB) with vegetation is a great challenge, which requires the use of high technologies to monitor and manage. Moreover, the effect of green HRB are poorly understood and a cost-benefit assessment is currently lacking.
Here, we propose to apply smart city and precision agriculture approaches to asses and monitor the effects of green HRB on the urban environment. Using a smart city approach, which associates technology, local government and society to improve citizens’ well-being, and a precision agriculture approach, which uses high-tech means to observe, measure and monitor intra-field changes in crops, we intend to assess and monitor environmental, health and economic benefits of green walls in a first of its kind pilot experiment in two cities with different climates (Tel-Aviv & Nanjing).
A first of its kind and the largest known green walls pilot experiment was erected in the Bar-Ilan University campus. The experiment comprises of three identical buildings forming two paths between each two of them, that mimic street canyons: a “green canyon”, where each of the facades of the buildings are covered (by Vertical Field) with two different technologies of vertical greenery system (VGS): green walls and vertical forest, and a control “grey canyon”.
Environmental
Health
Precision agriculture
Economics
Urban planing
Smart cities
Environmental assessment
The environmental objective of this project is to assess the impact of green walls on the surroundings urban environment (local climate: temperature, radiation, humidity, wind, and carbon and water fluxes). The experiment comprises of three identical buildings forming two paths between each two of them, that mimic street canyons: a “green canyon”, where each of the facades of the buildings are covered (by Vertical Field) with two different technologies of vertical greenery system (VGS): green walls and vertical forest, and a control “grey canyon”. Both canyons are meshed with identical set of sensors (installed by EnviroManager) that monitors the local climate, building thermal and acoustics parameters and air quality. The main environmental objectives are:
1. Assess impact of VGS on the surroundings urban environment (local climate) in terms of temperature, radiation, humidity and wind.
2. Assess the effects of environment on the VGS i.e. the plants response in terms of carbon uptake and water fluxes to different weather conditions.
3. Testing responses of the plants - long-term effects of cultivation on the VGS will be studied throughout the project.
Health assessment
Many epidemiological studies have reported health benefits from exposure to greenness. Generally, these studies reported improvement in general and cardiovascular mortality, quality of life, cognitive outcomes, stress relief, pregnancy outcomes (birth weight and gestational growth) and improvement in positive and negative feelings. In addition to these observational studies, interventional studies were also conducted to evaluate the short term and long-term effects of intentional exposure to greenness in semi experimental and experimental studies. In these interventional studies, measured possible mediators such as reduced heat, noise and air pollution explained only part of the observed effects on mental and cognitive outcomes, suggesting the existence of other mechanisms (such as restoration). Although evidence on healing effects of indoor green walls on patients and families are piling up, only a single study of indoor green walls on cognitive and emotional outcomes of healthy elementary-level classrooms was identified. In this study results demonstrated that children in classrooms where a green wall was placed scored better on tests for selective attention and positively influenced children's classroom evaluations. In addition, there was no evidence (i.e. an absence of studies) on beneficial health outcomes from exposure to outdoor green walls on healthy population. The health assessment objective of this project is conduct a semi-experimental first of his kind study on the beneficial effects of exposure to outdoor vertical walls.
Economics assessment
Under limited budgets and alternative uses of resources, in order to determine whether to adopt green HBR walls on a large scale, quantitative economic estimates are required. While numerous studies have proven the economic and environmental benefits of green roofs or conducted a lifecycle benefit-cost analysis of green roofs. Such an analysis that assigns a monetary value to the costs and benefits of green HBR walls is still lacking. The economic investigation will be conducted within the framework of the smart city approach, which evaluates tangible and intangible benefits for urban areas’ citizens. We are developing a business model that will propose directions of how to create and deliver economic value. The business model will provide information about costing, pricing and possible revenue structure. Based on our scientific and practical insights we will be able to develop a set of recommendations and methods of how to examine the economic feasibility of integrating greening solutions into the smart city. The model will be developed using the lean startup methodology and business canvas model.
Precision Agriculture methods
For the environmental assessment we are using precision agriculture methods. Data from cloud based sensors and proximal sensing (thermal and hyper-spectral cameras) is processed for retrieving meaningful parameters such as evapotranspiration and gross primary production. In the future, these will assist in building a spatial decision support system for irrigation (and probably fertilization) that will interact with Netafim’s irrigation and fertilization controller (net-bit, that is currently installed in the project) to complete a full precision agriculture managing system for VGS.
Urban Planing
According to the recent report of the United Nation, most of the population in the world lives in the cities, a trend that grows every year and expected to increase to 68% by 2050 (UN, 2018). Greenery in cities and vertical greenery system (VGS) was suggested by the European Commission as a Nature based Solution (NbS) for mitigation the effects on the environment, human health and well-being caused by urbanization and climate change. Here we aim to up-scale experiment results to a city scale and simulate the potential effect of VGSs in a larger urban environment. Results will serve as a practical knowledge support municipalities, urban planners, architects, regulators etc. understand the potential of VGSs as a sustainable solution for the UHI and promote biophilic design.
Smart cities
Bar-Ilan Centre for Smart Cities is an ecosystem for smart city development. Scientists, entrepreneurs, citizens, city officials and solution providers work together to better understand the city’s needs and find appropriate solutions. The university campus acts as a living lab, where researchers and solution providers can test their ideas and solutions and get feedback from the end users; i.e., citizens. Cooperation between scientists and solution providers improves the solutions and helps in creating a new knowledge by both scientists and vendors.
The university campus which is a “mini city” faces many of the problems of a regular city, such as transportation, networks, energy, security, etc. and is thus an excellent beta site for testing all kinds of solutions.