Sustainable Design of Urban Rooftop Food-Energy-Land Nexus

Urban rooftop functional design offers a promising option to enable multi-function urban land-use to deliver multiple ecosystem services, e.g., food production by rooftop agriculture and energy supply by installing photovoltaic (PV) panels. To identify the best rooftop utilization strategy considering multiple decision criteria and understand the impact of rooftop solution on the design of urban energy systems, we propose a whole system modeling framework that integrates biogeochemical simulation and multi-objective energy system optimization. We apply the framework to evaluate three rooftop agriculture options, namely, basic rooftop farming, unconditioned greenhouse, and conditioned greenhouse, and one rooftop energy supply option, i.e., PV panels, for an urban energy eco-design case in Shanghai, China. Enabling rooftop agriculture options brings more flexibility to the design and operation of energy systems. PV panels provide cost-optimal solutions, whereas conditioned greenhouse potentially delivers environmentally sustainable land-use by contributing to climate regulation ecosystem services.