Abstract Body

The global urban population is increasing (up to 9.8 billion people by 2050) and is more than half of the total world’s population (55% according to United Nations data). This has contributed to accelerated land use for cities even to the detriment of agricultural and forest land.
The urbanization process has removed most people from food production and made them dependent on food imported from increasingly far territories.
This has potential consequences for food security, greenhouse gas emissions, environmental sustainability. Moreover, the recent pandemic has highlighted the need to make cities more and more self-sufficient and transform balconies and terraces into gardens useful also for horticulture. Indeed, urban food production could reduce net greenhouse gas emissions because of its potential to produce food with lower intensity of transportation energy use and packaging, and greater carbon sequestration.
Therefore, urban food production can be an important component of urban ecosystems and can contribute to improve urban climate and environment but at the same time human physical, psychological and social health.
The research is based on a global vision of farm to fork productive urban green through a multidisciplinary approach in order to improve the energy performance of buildings and the resilience of cities to disruptive events such as heatwaves and pandemics. To encourage the widespread diffusion of greenery at home, smart, green and low-cost systems and components have been defined for the sustainable production (without pesticides) of horticultural products with innovative systems to be inserted on balconies and terraces. These components and systems are equipped with appropriate sensors and actuators that automatically ensure actions to create and maintain the well-being of the plants as well as the building's shading conditions and contribution to the production of clean air. The experimental design and implementation of these smart and green prototypes involve the use of a low-cost control unit that simplifies the prototyping of WiFi-based IoT applications as well as the use of recycled materials and water.
Finally, the applications of these systems to transform buildings into outdoor vertical farms are evaluated.