Building Information Modelling and vertical farming: Data integration to manage facilities and processes

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.

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.

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.

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.