Journal of Cleaner Production 268 (2020) 121928

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Journal of Cleaner Production

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

A decision support framework for the design and operation of

sustainable urban farming systems
Lanyu Li a, Xian Li b, Clive Chong c, Chi-Hwa Wang a, Xiaonan Wang a, *
a
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore, 117585, Singapore
b
NUS Environmental Research Institute, National University of Singapore, 138602, Singapore
c
Paradise Eco Tourism Pte Ltd, Six Battery Road, 049909, Singapore

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

Article history: The increasing population and continuous urbanization make food security prominent in sustainable
Received 10 August 2019 development. It is important to develop economic and resource-efficient farming solutions to meet food
Received in revised form demand. Renewable energy and waste valorization may bring benefits to build sustainable food pro-
17 April 2020
duction systems and facilitate circular economy. This work aims to develop a decision support framework
Accepted 26 April 2020
Available online 10 May 2020
for the stakeholders to quantitatively assess and optimize their urban farming systems for efficient in-
vestment and operation. The proposed framework is based on a holistic system model that considers the
Handling editor: Dr. Govindan Kannan energy and material consumption in vegetable production processes and the economic and environ-
mental performance of urban farming systems. In the multi-dimensional assessment model, the net
Keywords: present value and cradle-to-gate CO2 emission, water consumption, and land occupation of different
Economic assessment configurations of urban farming systems were assessed. In a further development, the assessment model
Environmental assessment was embedded in an optimization framework to identify the optimal system design and operation. The
Optimization optimal crop mix and the corresponding cultivation set points (such as temperature, humidity, irradi-
Precision agriculture
ance, illumination time, and CO2 concentration) for the farming modules were determined via optimi-
Sustainable urban farming
zation. To demonstrate the proposed framework, a case study on the design and operation of a vertical
Waste valorization
farm in Singapore was carried out. The case study examined alternative farming systems with glass-
enclosed vs window-free structural design, grid vs solar photovoltaic (PV) energy supply, and tradi-
tional chemical fertilizers vs food waste compost fertilization. Results showed that plant-factory farming
systems integrated with solar PV and beer-residue-derived fertilizer could be a promising and sustain-
able farming solution for Singapore as a tropical megacity.
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction emissions; and (d) the investment in sustainable agriculture is

Food production is a major environmental burden that accounts
for 10%e30% of an individual person’s environmental impact
(Stoessel et al., 2012). According to the recent report from the Food
and Agriculture Organization (FAO, 2018), food production is facing
several challenges: (a) there is a growing demand for food, espe-
cially the resource-intensive products (driven by increased popu-
lation, income, and urbanization); (b) land and water resources for
food production are limited and diminishing in quality; (c) the
agricultural sector is increasingly threatened by climate change,
while itself is one of the major sources of greenhouse gas
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: chewxia@nus.edu.sg (X. Wang).
insufficient. Today, modern farming has largely enhanced the effi-
ciency of crop production, reflected in the huge increase in crop
yield and decrease in manpower requirement, by the introduction
of farm machinery, use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides,
development of high yield varieties, and increased knowledge
about farm management practices (Trautmann et al., 2020). How-
ever, while the highly mechanized and chemical-oriented farming
practice makes agricultural production more efficient and cost-
effective, it does not make the production more sustainable. The
intensive use of machines, irrigation, and chemicals in modern
farming increases energy and water consumption and leads to
more significant environmental impacts, including potential
degradation of the soil and water resources (Trautmann et al.,
2020). Apart from the environmental impact, the lack of arable
land and the food wastage in the supply chain are also potential

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.121928
0959-6526/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
2 L. Li et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 268 (2020) 121928
problems. In 2019, about 10% of the habitable land was used for
farming. As it is foreseen that 70% of the population will stay in
cities by 2050, the expansion of urban territory will lead to further
shrinkage of arable land (FAO, 2009). The increased distance makes
food supply from rural farms to cities less preferable as it degrades
food quality and quantity, introducing wastes and environmental
burden. In the meanwhile, the rising demand for animal products
and the strong growth of bioenergy are shunting away more arable
land to the production of animal feed and energy crop, which could
aggravate food shortages (AGA Webmaster, 2018; FAO, 2017). With
these challenges and the problems of the current farming practice,
the FAO pointed out that new solutions and innovative technolo-
gies for sustainable intensification, efficient use of land and water,
energy and greenhouse gas reduction are required to move the
farming practice away from the “business as usual” (BAU) towards
sustainable production (FAO, 2018).
In the shift to efficient and sustainable agriculture, various
innovative farming systems have been developed. Agriculture is
increasingly spreading to towns and cities. Urban farming, a prac-
tice of cultivating, processing, and distributing food in or around
the urban area, is an emerging alternative to conventional rural
agriculture. It not only ensures the supply of fresh food to major
consumers but also generates employment, improves supply chain
efficiency, recycles urban wastes, creates greenbelts, and
strengthens cities’ resilience to climate change (FAO, 2020). In
addition, recycling waste in urban farms further fosters urban
symbiosis, helping to build a circular economy in cities and reserves
ecosystems outside cities (Goldstein et al., 2016a, 2016b; Piezer
et al., 2019). To fit in the city context, urban agriculture is ex-
pected to be small in ecological footprint, flexible, autonomous, and
sustainable. A variety of urban farming systems have been derived,
including rooftop farming (cultivating crops on the top of build-
ings), vertical farming (growing crops in vertically stacked layers),
and plant factory (an indoor vertical farming system for efficient
quality food production) (Kozai et al., 2019; Sanye
-Mengual et al.,
2015; Shamshiri et al., 2018). Indoor farming grows plants in
cleanroom-like conditions, where the cultivation environment
(from temperature, humidity, and CO2 concentration to lighting,
water, and nutrients) is controlled. This is also known as the
concept of control environment agriculture (CEA). The environ-
mental condition, such as the LED lights used to replace sunlight,
can be carefully calibrated to maximize plant photosynthesis and
improve crop yield (Kee, 2019). Advancement in sensor technology
enables the monitoring of the environmental conditions in the CEA.
With further development of the wireless sensor network and
devices, the concept of Internet of things (IoT) that interrelates
everything connected to the internet for data transfer without
human interaction can be adopted to facilitate automation of the
farming process (Kamilaris and Prenafeta-Boldú, 2018;
Muangprathub et al., 2019; Wallace, 1994). With the help of these
novel technologies, accurate monitoring and control of urban
farming systems can be achieved for standardized quality control,
food sourcing, and keeping track of the environmental impact of
food production. It is expected that indoor agriculture will continue
expanding at nearly 20% annually through 2023. With this prom-
ising outlook, Singapore, a highly urbanized modern city-state with
limited arable land, is attracting more research and multinational
investment in urban agriculture (Kee, 2019).
However, there is no “one-size fits all” technology. To improve
the quantity, quality, and sustainability of agricultural production,
decision-makers or farmers need to develop site-specific strategies.
For decision-makers, how to quantify the techno-economic and
environmental impact of an urban farming system and how to
determine the choice of crops and the set points for optimal eco-
nomic and environmental performances are two key questions for
system selection and design. However, it can be a challenging task
for farming practitioners to derive the optimal design and opera-
tional plan. To address this problem, this work aims to propose a
comprehensive and versatile decision support framework, which
could serve the simulation, assessment, and optimization purposes
to help decision-makers with the design and operation of sus-
tainable urban farming systems.
Life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost analysis (LCCA)
are mostly used for system assessment in the literature. These
methods have been applied to study the performance of the food
value chain in multiple scales. In process-scale studies, various
forms of farming system designs were investigated. Maucieri et al.
(2018) used a life cycle assessment method to quantify the envi-
ronmental impact of a micro aquaponics system for educational
purposes. Liaros et al. (2016) conducted a techno-economic eval-
uation of urban plant factories using life cycle cost analysis. Oliver-
Sola et al. (2015), Sanye

-Mengual et al. (2015) and Sanjuan-Delm
as
et al. (2018) carried out successive life cycle cost and life cycle
assessment studies on a real rooftop farm in Barcelona, which was
reconstructed from an open-field rooftop farm to an integrated
rooftop greenhouse (iRTG) system. Besides, network-scale studies
were also conducted to take into account the interaction of the
urban farming process with other industrial or ecological systems.
Stoessel et al. (2012) carried out detailed assessment of the life
cycle inventory and carbon and water footprint of 34 fruits and
vegetables of a large Swiss retailer using an LCA approach with the
goal of providing decision support to the retailer on purchasing
options and improving supply chain management. Piezer et al.
(2019) developed a combined LCA and ecological network anal-
ysis (ENA) approach to assess the sustainability of growing to-
matoes in an integrated rooftop greenhouse under the urban
energy-food nexus context.
In most of the studies, researchers focus on assessing the
farming projects with real-world data available. However, in this
way, it is not an easy task to make a design or operational adjust-
ment to improve farm performance if the assessment suggests that
the existing configuration is not sustainable. Prior assessment and
optimization on the design and operation of the farm (e.g. in the
conceptual or design phase of the project) could help decision-
makers to specify better choices and increase the profitability and
sustainability of their investment. To achieve this, modeling and
optimization techniques may be required. Actually, several decision
support systems (DSS) based on modeling and simulation have
been developed to assess farming systems. Benis et al. (2017)
developed a comprehensive simulation-based decision-support
workflow which simulates and visualizes food production, water
use, and energy use for Building-Integrated Agriculture (BIA). They
covered the site, farm structure, operation, and plant growth
simulation in their model. However, they did not consider incor-
porating optimization methods to facilitate and automate the se-
lection of a better design or operation strategy of the BIA.
Optimization techniques have been applied in several studies in the
management of conventional farms (RaheliNamin et al., 2016)
(Capitanescu et al., 2017) (Udias et al., 2018). But the application of
optimization in the field of agriculture is still underexploited
(Capitanescu et al., 2017), especially for urban farming systems.
Still, it is worth noting that there are two relevant studies on urban
farming systems. Brulard et al. (2018) investigated the optimization
on the production and storage of perishable products, with the
objective of maximizing the revenue of the urban farming system.
Johnson et al. (2018) proposed a concept of “personal food com-
puter” and optimized the plant metabolites in an open-source
controlled environment using surrogate modeling. However, the
publications so far have not addressed the aforementioned gap of
helping farmers to decide what design of the urban farm system,
 L. Li et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 268 (2020) 121928
what crop to be planted, and what operating conditions would help
them yield the highest economic benefit while achieving good
environmental sustainability. To fill this research gap, a holistic
decision-support framework integrating modeling, multi-
dimensional sustainability assessment, and optimization, which is
in line with the essence of precision agriculture research (i.e.
optimizing returns on inputs while preserving resources)
(McBratney et al., 2005), was proposed in this study. It was devel-
oped to aid the design and production scheduling of the farm with
the following contributions to the field:

It helps farmers and stakeholders develop their design and
operation strategies with handy farm-wide input-output anal-
ysis, economic and environmental evaluation, and information
of the optimum system design and operation under different
scenarios.

The proposed decision support system, which provides solu-
tions to scheduling production of urban farms, can provide
guidance for farm-wide control. By linking the DSS to online
database captured by IoT technologies and robotic machines, it
is promising to achieve a high level of automation in the field of
urban agriculture, and quickly adopt economically and envi-
ronmentally sustainable production practices according to the
instant information without human intervention.
A case study based on data of Singapore was carried out to
showcase the modeling, assessment, and optimization of urban
farming systems using the proposed framework. In the case study,
three sets of scenarios were examined: (a) the scenarios where the
farming system was designed as modular plant factory with no
window, glass-enclosed greenhouses, and open field were
compared to find out the effect of greenhouse structure on the
system operation and performance; (b) the scenarios where the
farming system was powered by the grid and solar PV were
compared to find out the power supply method that was more
profitable and less resource/carbon-intensive; (c) the scenarios
where the crops were fertilized by chemical fertilizers and beer-
residue-derived compost were compared to study the economic
and environmental potential of waste-to-resource with the goal of
achieving circular economy. To illustrate this work, the remaining
paper is structured as follows: Section 2 presents the methodology
including the proposed framework and the assessment and opti-
mization models; Section 3 gives the background about the case
study and the scenario settings; Section 4 presents the results and
discussion; and Section 5 shows the conclusion of this study. A list
of the symbols used in this study is also available in the Supple-
mentary Information (Part F).
2. Methodology
The proposed decision support framework for the urban
farming system is illustrated in Fig. 1.
In the framework, there are three main modules, which are
Module I - Modeling of urban farming system, Module II - Multi-
dimensional sustainability assessment, and Module III - Optimiza-
tion. Data were extracted from databases and fed into Module I to
model the material and energy flows around the boundary of the
farm. The mass and energy balances were further tabulated as the
input for the economic and environmental assessment in Module II.
Furthermore, in Module III, decision support at a higher level was
provided by optimization, which integrated all the modules for
iterative calculation using a searching algorithm that identifies the
best design and operation of the farming system. Based on these
modules, this framework can provide users with four levels of de-
cision support: (a) a database to look up for information; (b) a
3
simulation tool to understand the effect of different settings on the
farm production; (c) an assessment tool to evaluate the economic
and environmental performance of various farming scenarios; and
(d) a holistic decision support system to recommend the optimal
production decisions to the users. The methodologies involved in
each individual part of the framework is discussed in the following
subsections.
2.1. Database
Data collection is an essential step to carry out the simulation,
assessment, and optimization of urban farming systems. The pro-
posed framework in this paper requires five major categories of
parameters which are listed below:

Site and climate data: temperature profile and humidity infor-
mation of the selected location.

Market data: market demand and selling price for different
crops.

Environmental analysis data: the elementary consumption and
emission for the production of each unit of energy or material
inlet.

Farm data: available land area, dimension and layout of the
farm, structural design, and culture method.

Crop data: characteristic temperature, humidity, daylight inte-
gral, light intensity, photoperiod, and CO2 concentration for crop
growth, and basic yield information.
These data were collected and stored in the database to support
decision making using the framework.
2.2. System modeling
With input data from the database, the crop yield and mass and
energy flows around the farming system were estimated using the
integrated system models as follows.
2.2.1. Crop yield model
This work aims to use a versatile model to predict the crop yield
using the reaction mechanisms in photosynthesis. Plants convert
solar energy into biomass through photosynthesis. One way to
estimate the yield of plants is based on the efficiency of the
photosynthesis process, which is affected by temperature, CO2
concentration, and light intensity for most of the plant species
(Boote et al., 1991; Lawlor, 2001). As illustrated by Fig. 2, each plant
has an optimal growing temperature at which its yield is optimized.
Either a higher or lower temperature diminishes the rate of
photosynthesis. On the other hand, this rate increases with CO2
concentration and light intensity until the saturation point is hit
and stays constant afterward.
Therefore, the total mass of production m, which depends on the
maximum yield the crop can achieve under the optimum condi-
tions Ymax , the planting area A, and the turns of crop production in a
year ncrop;max, is discounted when the operating condition is not at
its optimum (Eqn. (1)). The efficiency of photosynthesis was
defined as the ratio of actual rate of photosynthesis r and the rate at
optimum condition Rmax . The efficiency of photosynthesis caused
by the deviation of temperature, CO2 concentration, and light in-
tensity from the optimum were estimated by Eqns. (2)e(4) (Erwin
et al., 2017; Yan and Hunt, 1999). An overall efficiency hyield was
determined by the smallest value among hT , hCO2 , and hL since the
overall rate of photosynthesis is determined by the rate limiting
factor (Eqn. (5)).
4 L. Li et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 268 (2020) 121928

Fig. 1. Decision support framework for the urban farming system.

Fig. 2. Illustration of the response of the rate of photosynthesis to temperature, light intensity, and CO2 concentration (Boote et al., 1991; Lawlor, 2001).

  
hCO2 ¼ 1  exp  kCO2 , CCO2  CCO2 ;0 (3)
m ¼ Ymax ,A,ncrop;max ,hyield (1)
  
hL ¼ 1  exp  kI , IPAR  IPAR;0 (4)


 Topt
r Tmax  T T Tmax Topt
hT ¼ ¼ , (2)
Rmax Tmax  Topt Topt hyield ¼ minðhT ; hCO2 ; hL Þ (5)
 L. Li et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 268 (2020) 121928 5

2.2.2. Energy model outdoor environment in  C.

Energy consumption in indoor urban farming is mainly The energy rates referred to the ventilation are calculated by:
composed of two-fold aspects: (1) electricity consumed by the
heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) devices, and (2) Qven;in ¼ Hven;in m_ ven;in (8)
electricity consumed by lighting for plant growth.
Qven;out ¼ Hven;out m_ ven;out (9)
2.2.2.1. Energy for the HVAC devices. As depicted in Fig. 3, the en-
ergy consumption model of the HVAC used in vertical farming is
where Hven;in and Hven;out are the specific enthalpy of the fresh air
similar to that of conventional buildings, associated with the real-
and exhaust gas, respectively. m_ ven;in and m_ ven;out are the mass flow
time and complicated parameters that mainly embrace solar posi-
rates of the air supply and exhaust gas, respectively. The enthalpy of
tion and irradiance, dry-bulb temperature, relative humidity (RH),
the wet air is expressed as:
and internal gains from persons and appliances.
Considering the fact that different plants require different pa- 
Hven;out ¼ 1:005Tindoor þ ð2501 þ 1:86Tindoor Þdindoor
rameters of the indoor temperature and humidity, a general and (10)
Hven;in ¼ 1:005Tair þ ð2501 þ 1:86Tair Þdair
simplified model e that is acceptable by various plants e is
developed herein. In this work, we aim to include fogging and air-
where dindoor is the humidity ratio of indoor air. dair is the humidity
con cooling to investigate their performance in the module of
ratio of fresh air in kg/kg (dry air).
vertical farming. A rated cooling capacity of the HVAC unit was
Qvap;gain is composed of two-fold factors: (1) the vapor gain from
determined by the maximum cooling load of the module in an
the fogging device and (2) the vapor gain from the evaporation of
entire year, while the maximum cooling load was calculated by the
the plants, which can be calculated by:
energy conservation of the module of vertical farming. The energy
conservation of the vertical-farming module is expressed as: 
_
Qvap;gain ¼ HV ðm _
eva þ mfog (11)
Qappliance;gain þ Qsolar;gain þ Qperson;gain þ Qven;in þ Qvap;gain
þ Qinfiltration where HV is the specific enthalpy of vapor. m_ eva and m_ fog are the
¼ Qven;out þ Qloss þ Qcooling (6) vapor flow rate of the evaporation of the plants and the fogging
device, respectively. The specific enthalpy of the vapor and
where Qappliance;gain , Qsolar;gain , and Qperson;gain are the energy gains Qinfiltration can be calculated by:
contributed by the appliances, solar radiation, and persons inner
the indoor environment of the module, respectively. Qven;in repre- HV ¼ 2501 þ 1:86Tvap (12)
sents the energy input of the fresh air supplied by the ventilation
device. Qvap;gain is the energy input of the vapor (from both the 0:6Hven;in rair V
fogging device and the evaporation of the plants). Qven;out denotes Qinfiltration ¼ Hven;in m_ infil ¼ (13)
3600
the energy loss of the exhaust gas. Qcooling is the cooling load of the
indoor environment of vertical farming. Qinfiltration refers to the where Tvap is the temperature of vapor. rair is the density of the air
leakage of air through unsealed gaps. in the outdoor environment. V is the indoor volume.
Qloss is defined as the sensible heat rate from the indoor envi- Solar heat gain Qsolar;gain is composed of two aspects:
ronment to the outdoor environment, and can be expressed as:
Qsolar;gain ¼ QF þ QU (14)
Qloss ¼ Uvalue  A  ðTindoor  Tair Þ (7)
with
where Qloss is the heat gained from the outside environment in kW,
Uvalue is the overall heat transfer coefficient in W m2  C 1, A is the
QF ¼ AF UF ðTwall  Tindoor Þ (15)
surface area of greenhouse in m2, Tindoor is the set point of the in-
door air temperature in  C, Tair is the dry-bulb temperature of the

Fig. 3. Schematic of a module of vertical farming compositing of electric power supply, HVAC and fogging system.
6 L. Li et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 268 (2020) 121928
QU ¼ AU UU ðTwindow  Tindoor Þ
where AF is the surface area of the wall. UF and UU are the overall
heat transfer coefficients of the wall and window, respectively. Twall
is the outer surface temperature of the wall. AU is the surface area of
windows. Twindow is the surface temperature of the window.
The wall temperature can be calculated by energy conservation:
 
ISRG aAap ¼ QF þ sεF AF FF Twall
4 4
 Tsky þ UF AF ðTwall  Tair Þ
where ISRG is solar irradiance. a denotes the absorptivity of the
outer surface of the wall. Aap is the aperture area of a module of
vertical farming. s is StefaneBoltzmann constant. εF is the thermal
emissivity of the outer surface of the wall. FF is the view factor of
the thermal radiation for the wall. Tsky is the sky temperature,
which can be calculated by:
1:5
Tsky ¼ 0:0552Tair
The window temperature can be calculated by:
 
NU Ns ISRG AU ¼ QU þ sεU AU FU Twindow
4 4
 Tsky þ UU AU ðTwindow
 Tair Þ
where NU is the glazing factor (solar heat gain coefficient). Ns is the
shading factor. FU is the view factor of the thermal radiation for the
window.
Finally, for a conventional air-source electric compression
chiller, the hourly electricity consumption is estimated by:
Qcooling
UT ¼
COP
where COP is the coefficient of performance of a heat pump,
refrigerator, or an air conditioning system.
2.2.2.2. Energy for lighting. Plants are sensitive to the light spec-
trum of 400e700 nm, i.e. the photosynthetically active radiation
(PAR). IPAR , measured in mmol/m2/s, is the number of photons that
reach a plant for each second, while daily light integral (DLI),
measured in mol/m2/day, is the cumulative photon flux density
throughout a day (Benis et al., 2017). The DLI can be met by both
natural and artificial light as shown below:
DLI ¼ IPAR;sun tsun þ IPAR;light tlight
where IPAR;sun and IPAR;light are the number of photons that reach the
plant from the sun and artificial light. tsun and tlight are the illumi-
nation time of sunlight or artificial light, respectively. Lighting from
artificial light consumes energy. Energy used for lighting can be
estimated by the number of lights required, the rated power of
lights Plight , and the photoperiod of artificial lighting tlight :
UL ¼ Nlight Plight tlight
2.2.3. Material flow model
Apart from energy consumption, vegetable production also re-
quires material inputs such as water, CO2, seed, fertilizer, and
pesticide, which will be discussed in this section.
2.2.3.1. Water. Water consumption mainly relates to the evapora-
(16) tion of the crop. It is commonly estimated using the Blaney-Criddle
Equation (Brouwer and Heibloem, 1986):
ETcrop ¼ Kc pð0:46Tmean þ 8Þ (23)
where ETcrop is the crop evapotranspiration in mm/day, Kc is the
crop factor specified for each species, Tmean is the mean daily
temperature ( C), and p is the mean daily percentage of annual
daytime hours dependent on latitude. Therefore, the water con-
sumption can be estimated based on crop transpiration and area of
(17)
plantation A as shown below:
UH2 O ¼ ETcrop A (24)
2.2.3.2. Carbon dioxide. The concentration of CO2 in air (CCO2 ;air ) is
about 400 parts per million (ppm) (NASA, 2019). As CO2 is
consumed by photosynthesis, supplemental CO2 may be needed to
(18) maintain the CO2 concentration for indoor farming systems (CCO2 ).
The amount of CO2 required for enrichment depends the mass
flowrate of CO2 leaving the system and the total photoperiod:
m_ ven;out    
UCO2 ¼ CCO2  CCO2 ;air rCO2 tsun þ tlight (25)
rven;out
(19)
where m_ ven;out is the mass flowrate of vented gas. rven;out and rCO2
are the density of the vented gas and carbon dioxide.
2.2.3.3. Seed. The number of seeds required was calculated based
on the mass of crop production mðiÞ, the mass of a crop mper head ,
and the seed yield yseed (ratio of survival crops to the total seed
sown):
(20) m
Useed ¼ (26)
mper head  yseed
2.2.3.4. Fertilizer and pesticide. The amount of fertilizer and pesti-
cide required for crop production was estimated by the average
quantity of nutrient and pesticide applied to the field for each
hectare of plantation in common practice:
X
Ufertilizer;k , xf ;k;l  mf ;l A,ncrop;max (27)
k
Upesticide ¼ munit; pest A,ncrop;max (28)
(21)
where Ufertilizer;k is the fertilizer consumption. Subscript k denotes
the different types of fertilizer that provide the necessary nutrients
for plant growth. xf ;k;l is the mass fraction of nutrient l in fertilizer k.
mf ;l is the mass of nutrient l required for each unit hectare of land in
each crop cycle. Upesticide is pesticide consumption and munit; pest is
the mass of fertilizer required for each unit hectare of land in each
crop cycle.
(22) 2.3. Multi-dimensional sustainability assessment
Based on the mass and energy balance given by Module I, the
material and energy flows around the farm gate can be calculated
for the assessment of the economic and environmental assessment.
The net present value (NPV), return on investment (ROI) and
payback period were used as the economic indicators, while the
CO2 emission, water consumption, and land occupation were
 L. Li et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 268 (2020) 121928 7

evaluated as the environmental indicators. As shown in Fig. 4, an The equations for the economic and environmental assessment are
agricultural product goes through the production, packing and provided in the following subsections.
product treatment, transport and distribution, retail, consumer, and
recycle or disposal processes throughout its life cycle. Considering
from a farm operator’s perspective, the economic and environ- 2.3.1. Economic indicators
mental indicators were evaluated at a cradle-to-gate level, i.e., The net present value NPV is a cumulative sum of the discounted
counting the economic and environmental burdens from resource cash flow in each year t, which depends on the revenue Revenuet ,
extraction (cradle) to the end of the vegetable production process operating expenditure OPEXt , and the capital expenditure CAPEXt of
(gate). For the economic assessment, the capital investment for the year and the interest rate ir:
construction and equipment as well as the operating cost of energy
and material utilization, labor, and land were considered. For the ,
X
N
environmental assessment, the environmental burdens generated NPV ¼ CFt ð1 þ irÞt (29)
from HVAC, lighting, CO2 enrichment, irrigation, pest control, fer- t¼0
tilizer application, and seeding processes were taken into account.

Fig. 4. Scope of the multi-dimensional sustainability assessment.

8 L. Li et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 268 (2020) 121928

estimated based on inlet energy and material utilization and their

CFt ¼ Revenuet  OPEXt  CAPEXt (30) background emission or abatement per service unit.
X X 
Revenuet ¼ pcrop;i;t mt;i (31) Water consumption ¼ UH2 O þ uiH2 O;j * Uj (37)
i j

X
OPEXt ¼ FCt þ Cj (32) X 
Land occupation ¼ Uland þ uiland;j * Uj (38)
j
j

FC ¼ Labourt þ Rentt (33)  

CO2 emission ¼ UCO2  UCO2 fix
X 0 1
Cj ¼ pj Uj (34) X X
i þ @ uiCO2 ;j * Uj  uiCO2 fix;j * Uj A (39)
j j
where CFt is the cash flow in year t, pcrop is the unit selling price of
crop i in year t, mt;i is the mass of production of crop i in year t. FCt , where Uj refers to material and energy consumption as mentioned
Labourt , and Rentt are the fixed cost, labor cost, and land rental cost in the economic analysis. Specifically, UH2 O , Uland , UCO2 , and UCO2 fix
in year t. Cj , pj , and Uj are the cost, unit cost, and the amount of are the water consumption, land area occupation, CO2 emission,
energy and material consumption (j ¼ electricity, H2O, CO2, seed, and CO2 fixation of the within the foreground farm system. uiH2 O;j ,
fertilizer, pesticide). uiland;j , uiCO2 ;j , and uiCO2 fix;j are the water consumption, and land
While NPV shows how much economic benefit can be gained occupation, CO2 emission, and CO2 emission fixation for the pro-
from a project, return on investment (ROI) and payback period are duction of each unit of energy or material inlet.
other two standard metrics that indicate the investment perfor-
mance of a project from other aspects (Phillips et al., 2014). ROI is a
calculation of the net project benefit divided by investment. In this
study, short-term ROI, calculated by the annual net project benefit 2.4. Optimization model
divided by investment, was used to show the speed of return on
investment (PVsell, 2019). On the other hand, payback time, the Optimization was the last step and the highest level of the de-
inverse of short-term ROI, was used to depict how long it takes for cision support framework. It takes in the output from the previous
an investment to pay for itself. steps discussed in Section 2.1-2.3. As shown in Eqn. (40)e(43), the
optimization can be carried out to optimize either the economic
Revenuet  Costt profit NPV or the environmental indicators, or optimize the both
ROI ¼ (35) economic and environmental objectives at the same time. The
Investment
economic and environmental analysis are integrated by the over-
Investment arching framework in the former case, while the two objectives are
Payback time ¼ (36) integrated by optimization in the latter option (Miah et al., 2017).
Revenuet  Costt
The searching for the optimal solutions was done by varying the
decision variables: (1) growing area Ai allocated to crop i, (2)
temperature Ti, (3) humidity RHi, (4) light intensity IPAR,i, and (5)
CO2 concentration CCO2 ;i of the growing environment if controlled
2.3.2. Environmental indicators environment agriculture was used. When the growing environ-
As aforementioned, water and land resource consumption and ment cannot be controlled, the only decision variable would be the
climate change effect are major concerns in food production. The growing area Ai allocated to crop i.
cradle-to-gate water consumption, land occupation, and CO2 It was assumed that all the vegetables produced can be sold as
emission were assessed as the environmental indicators in this case long as the production does not exceed the demand (Eqn. (44)).
study. The equations for these specific environmental indicators are Additionally, the number of crops that could be planted was limited
shown in Eqn. (37)-(39). The cradle-to-gate water consumption by the available planting area (Eqn. (45)). Therefore, the optimi-
was calculated as a sum of the water utilized in the farming process zation model was mathematically formulated as follows:
and the water consumption incurred by the production of the en-
ergy and material flows delivered to the farm gate. The latter was a X
N X .
product sum of water consumed for per service unit of input energy max NPV ¼ CFt;i ð1 þ irÞt (40)
or material and the amount of energy or material required for farm t¼0 i
operation. Similarly, the cradle-to-gate land occupation was esti-
mated by the adding the land area utilized by the farm itself Uland and/or min.
and the land area utilized to produce the material and energy flows X 
delivered to the farm gate. On the other hand, the cradle-to-gate Water consumption ¼ UH2 O þ uiH2 O;j * Uj (41)
CO2 emission was estimated as a net effect of the CO2 emission j
and the emission abatement achieved via biogenic fixation. CO2
enrichment was identified as the major source of carbon emission. X 
Land occupation ¼ Uland þ uiland;j * Uj (42)
The CO2 fixation in crop production was estimated based on the
j
mass and carbon content of the vegetables. The CO2 emission and
fixation introduced by the production of the farm inflows were
 L. Li et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 268 (2020) 121928
 
CO2 emission ¼ UCO2  UCO2 fix
0 1
X X
þ @ uiCO2 ;j * Uj  uiCO2 fix;j * Uj A
j j
s.t.
mt;i  Demandt;i
X scenarios. In this study, six different scenarios were constructed for
Ai  TA
i
where subscript i stands for the type of crops, subscript j refers to
the material and flows, t represents the year of operation, mt;i is the
mass of crop i produced in year t, Demandt;i is the market demand
for crop i in year t, Ai is the planting area allocated to crop i and TA
refers to the total available planting area.
2.5. Implementation
Finally, the modeling and optimization framework was imple-
mented in the General Algebraic Modeling System (GAMS) soft-
ware. For each scenario, the mixed integer nonlinear programming
(MINLP) problem was solved using the BARON solver, with solving
time within 0.016 s.
3. Case study
To demonstrate the proposed assessment and optimization
framework, we carried out a case study on a vertical farm to be built
in Kranji, Singapore. The case study was based in Singapore since it
is a suitable place to testbed urban farming. On the one hand, the
BAU farming practice cannot be widely deployed since Singapore is
a highly urbanized country with 5.6 million populations but only
0.8% of arable land. On the other hand, the Singapore government
aims to become the urban agriculture and aquaculture technology
hub in the region, and has been investing more to boost the agri-
cultural sector for innovative technologies (Tan, 2019). The ultimate
goal is to reduce the reliance on food imports, provide seasonal
production, and at the same time reduce the carbon footprint.
Located just one degree north of the equator, Singapore has
abundant rainfall, high humidity, hot and uniform temperature,
and long hours of sunlight. These climate variables do not have
large variations throughout the year and the annual averages of the
meteorology parameters are summarized in Table S1 in the Sup-
plementary Information.
The farm has a footprint of 500 m2 with a dimension of
25 m  50 m. Due to the scare land area, a multi-tier vertical
farming structure becomes more space-efficient. It was assumed
that the walls were insulted by heat resistant material to reduce
heat loss and solar heat gain. Key information of the infrastructural
settings of the farm is available from Table S3 of the Supplementary
Information. In Singapore, more than 80% of the leafy vegetables
are produced from soil cultivation (AVA, 2017). The studied farm
also adopted a soil-based vertical farming system with soil recir-
culation. We defined lettuce, spinach, cabbage, broccoli, Cai Xin, Nai
Bai, Xian Cai, and Kang Kong, a mixture of western and eastern
vegetables, as alternative candidates to be grown in the farm as
they are the most popular vegetables consumed in Singapore and
suitable to be produced in various urban farming systems. The
major properties of the different vegetables can be found in
Table S2 in the Supplementary Information.
With a specific farm design, the proposed decision-support
9
framework would return the economically optimum crop choice
and operation condition and evaluation on multiple sustainability
indices. However, various factors including the type of farming
system, structural design of the farm, the source of energy supply,
(43)
and the type of fertilizer could influence the economic and envi-
ronmental performance of the system. Using the proposed
decision-support framework, different system configurations can
be assessed and optimized in a standard manner. Scenario analysis
(44) can be easily carried out to identify the most economically and
environmentally favored system design among all constructed
(45) the scenario analysis, as shown in Table 1.
The base case (BC) was a plant factory built from standard
containers with no windows. In this scenario, a two-story layout
was adopted, while electricity was provided from the grid, and
nutrient supplied by chemical fertilizer. Glass-enclosed greenhouse
(GEG) represented a glass-enclosed greenhouse with electricity
provided from the grid and nutrient supplied by chemical fertil-
izers. Open field (OF) represented the conventional farming prac-
tice where the vegetables are planted horizontally on the ground
without environmental control. Different from the base case, the
renewable energy (RE) scenario was powered by solar PV instead of
the grid. On the other hand, the waste valorization (WV) scenario
was different from the base case by the type of fertilizer used.
Instead of using chemical fertilizer, this scenario used organic fer-
tilizer derived from beer residue. The crops produced using this
organic fertilizer could be sold at a higher price as organic products
since no chemical fertilizers, pesticides, growth regulators, bioen-
gineering methods, or ionizing radiation was used during produc-
tion. Finally, as a two-pronged approach, renewable energy & waste
valorization (REWF) was a two-level plant factory with electricity
supplied via solar PV and nutrient supply by beer-residue-derived
fertilizer. The properties of the artificial lighting equipment and
fertilizers considered in this scenario analysis are provided in
Tables S4 and S5 of the Supplementary Information.
Till this point, the information of the infrastructure of the farm,
the meteorology condition of the surrounding environment, and
the choice of crops for the scenario analysis have been set up. The
corresponding parameters are also provided in the Supplementary
Information as aforementioned. In addition to these parameters,
the market data and environmental data used to calculate the NPV
and the cradle-to-gate inventories are required in the multi-
dimensional assessment. The unit investment cost for the infra-
structure and equipment as well as the costs related to farm
operation can be found in Table S6 and Table S7 in the Supple-
mentary Information. The unit price of seeds, selling price of crops,
and the unit cost for fertilizers can be found in Table S8 and Table S9
in the Supplementary Information. The amount of water con-
sumption, and land occupation, CO2 emission, and CO2 emission
fixation for the production of each unit of energy or material inlet
were obtained from the Ecoinvent database version 3.5 (Wernet
et al., 2016).
4. Results and discussion
As a demonstration of the proposed framework, the net present
value was maximized in the optimization. The optimally selected
crops and their cultivation conditions returned by the optimization
are summarized for different scenarios as shown in Table 2.
Detailed information about the farm-wide energy and material
consumption of these scenarios are also provided in the Supple-
mentary Information (Part E).
The optimization returns Cai Xin and Xian Cai as the optimum
crops to be grown for all scenarios. The OF scenario can be used as a
benchmark for comparison as it shows the temperature, relative
10 L. Li et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 268 (2020) 121928

Table 1
Scenarios under investigation.

Scenarios Structure Energy source Fertilizer type

Greenhouse Plant factory Open field Grid Solar PV Chemical fertilizer Beer-residue-derived fertilizer

Base case (BC) C C C

Glass-enclosed greenhouse (GEG) C C C
Open field (OF) C C C
Renewable energy (RE) C C C
Waste valorization (WV) C C C
Renewable energy & waste valorization (REWV) C C C

Table 2
Optimal operating conditions for different scenarios.

Cai Xin Xian Cai

X T RH CO2 PAR hyield x T RH CO2 PAR hyield

Num. of rooms 
( C) e (ppm) (mmol/m /s)
2
(0e1) Num. of rooms 
( C) e (ppm) (mmol/m /s)
2
(0e1)

BC 20 28 80.3% 503 619 0.77 20 28 80.3% 698 857 0.88

GEG 20 28 80.3% 618 0 0.84 20 28 80.3% 834 1024 0.92
OF 250a 28 80.0% 400 0 0.68 250a 28 80.0% 400 0 0.68
RE 20 28 80.3% 503 619 0.77 20 28 80.3% 698 857 0.88
WV 20 28 80.3% 503 619 0.77 20 28 80.3% 698 857 0.88
REWV 20 28 80.3% 503 619 0.77 20 28 80.3% 698 857 0.88
a
Unit in m.2.

the efficiency of photosynthesis is 87% of the maximum when the

Fig. 5. The cumulative cash flow of different scenarios.
humidity (RH), CO2 concentration, PAR, and photosynthetic effi-
ciency when the crops are cultivated in the outside environment.
The optimum temperature for all scenarios for both of the crops is
the same as the one assumed for the outside environment (28  C)
and several degrees higher than the temperature that optimizes the
yield of each type of crop, which is 25  C for Cai Xin and 27  C for
Xian Cai. This temperature is maintained as it saves cooling demand
without causing significant discounts in the rate of photosynthesis
for the crops. The optimum humidity of the indoor farming facil-
ities is 80.3%, which is slightly higher than the RH of the outside
environment. No extra humidification from the fogging system is
required and the 0.3% rise in RH in the indoor environment is
caused by the transpiration of plants. The CO2 concentration of the
outside environment is 400 ppm and the PAR outdoors is 824 mmol/
m2/s. The PAR of for both of the crops is zero as it was assumed that
no artificial lighting was provided to OF. Under the natural lighting,
temperature and CO2 concentration are maintained around the
ones for optimum yield. Under the atmospheric CO2 concentration,
the efficiency of photosynthesis is 68% of the optimum when the
temperature and lighting are maintained around the ones for op-
timum yield. Therefore, CO2 concentration is the limiting factor that
affects the overall efficiency of photosynthesis for the OF scenario.
For the plant factories used in Scenario BC, RE, WV, and REWV, no
natural lighting is available as this system was designed with no
window to minimize heat transfer through windows.
For optimized NPV, the CO2 concentration is enriched to
503 ppm with artificial lighting supplied at a PAR of 619 mmol/m2/s
for Cai Xin and 698 ppm and 857 mmol/m2/s for Xian Cai. At the
optimum set of operating conditions, the efficiency of crop pro-
duction for Cain Xin and Xian Cai is 0.77 and 0.88, respectively.
Natural lighting with 824 mmol/m2/s natural PAR is available for the
GEG scenario. For Cai Xin, no artificial lighting is required for the
optimal operation. With an enrichment of the CO2 concentration to
618 ppm, the optimum NPV is obtained for this scenario and the
overall photosynthetic efficiency is as high as 0.84. For Xian Cai,
extra lighting is provided by artificial lighting at a PAR of
1024 mmol/m2/s in addition to the natural lighting for 8 h. The CO2
concentration is enriched to 834 ppm and the overall photosyn-
thesis efficiency is as high as 0.92. With these sets of operating
conditions, the efficiency of photosynthesis for each type of crop in
GEG turns out to be the highest among all scenarios. Moreover,
with a higher photosynthesis efficiency and a higher unit area yield,
Xian Cai yields more mass production than Cai Xin. Under the
optimized operating conditions, the annual production is 21.5 tons/
year (±0.9%) for Cai Xin and 54.5 tons/year (±0.4%) for Xian Cai for
the considered scenarios. This may make it the most economically
preferable choice for production. However, not all the space is
allocated for Xian Cai due to the constraint of market demand.
With the optimized operating conditions, the evaluation of the
corresponding economic and environmental performance for the
six scenarios was returned by the sustainability assessment module
of the proposed framework. In terms of economic performance,
several economic indexes were used, including NPV, ROI, and
payback time. A cumulative NPV curve is presented in Fig. 5. The
 L. Li et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 268 (2020) 121928 11

Table 3
Key economic indexes of different scenarios.

BC GEG OF RE WV REWV

ROI 72% 33% 916.79% 71% 136% 131%

Payback period (y) 1.39 3.03 0.11 1.41 0.73 0.76
NPV (USD) 3,334,928 2,705,979 3,001,990 3,524,805 6,576,471 6,766,242

supply and beer-residue-derived fertilizer (WV), plant factory with

Fig. 6. Water consumption, CO2 emission, and land occupation of different scenarios.
key economic indexes of different scenarios are also given in
Table 3.
In Fig. 5, the intercept at year 0 reflects the investment cost for
the project, the intercept at year 20 is the total profit gained
throughout 20 years of operation, the slope of the NPV curves in-
dicates the annual cash flow, and the intercept with the x-axis
represents the payback time. Comparing the six scenarios, with a
project-lifespan of 20 years, plant factory with solar PV and beer-
residue-derived fertilizer (REWV) generates the largest profit
among the six scenarios, followed by plant factory with grid power
PV and chemical fertilizer (RE), plant factory utilizing grid elec-
tricity and chemical fertilizer (BC), and open field (OF). On the
contrary, glass-enclosed greenhouse (GEG) is the least profitable
option. The lowest initial investment is found in OF (20,160 USD)
and the highest found in GEG (614,171 USD). The annual investment
for the plant factories is moderate with a value of 308,840 USD for
plant factories without solar PV installation (BC and WV) and a
value of 332,026 USD for the ones with solar PVs (RE and REWV).
The slopes show that WV and REWV gain a larger annual profit
compared with other scenarios. OF has the smallest annual cash
flow, followed by GEG, BC, and RE. In terms of return on investment,
the lower bound for most vegetables is 40% while the higher bound
can be as high as 300% for some crops (Cordero, 2018). OF has a high
ROI as it has high revenue with little initial investment. As OF has
the fastest return on investment, it has the shortest payback time
and the investment can be recovered within 2 months. Installing
solar PV slightly prolongs the payback period, but it brings more
total benefit than purchasing electricity from the grid. Using a
waste valorization approach for fertilizer supply increases the re-
turn of investment and shortens the payback period. The invest-
ment can be paid back in 8e9 months when beer-residue-derived
fertilizer is used to produce vegetables. The plant factory structure
turns out to be a more profitable option than a glass-enclosed
greenhouse structure and open field. While glass greenhouse may
need 3 years for recovery, using the plant factory may only need
less than 1.5 years.
The high profitability of the waste valorization scenarios (WV
and REWV) mainly attributes to the higher benefit generated by the
sales of organic products. Because in the parameters input step, it
was assumed that the products cultivated without the use of
chemical fertilizers and pesticides sold at the selling price for
organic products, which is higher than the normal selling price for
products grown with chemical fertilizer and pesticide inputs. The
finding suggests that food waste recycling as fertilizer in farms is
not only a measure to reduce urban food waste but also a promising
strategy to boost the profit of the business. Moreover, the use of
renewable solar energy and the plant factory structure could bring
more economic benefit than open-field agriculture in the long run
(more than 8 years in this case). On the other hand, the greenhouse
structure is not favorable for investment for a tropical climate.
As for the environmental performance, the cradle-to-gate water
consumption, CO2 emission, and land occupation for various sce-
narios were evaluated. The results are shown in Fig. 6. Stacked bar
charts were used to present the total environmental footprint and a
further breakdown of the impact caused by the vegetable produc-
tion process itself and the impact caused by the upstream processes
including electricity production, water production, fertilizer pro-
duction, CO2 production, and seed production.
According to Fig. 6, vegetable production accounts for the major
water consumption for most of the scenarios, followed by elec-
tricity generation. RE and REWV have less water consumption than
other scenarios since they utilize solar energy which requires less
water compared to grid electricity supplied from the natural gas
based power plant. OF also has less cradle-to-gate water con-
sumption even though it requires more water in the crop
12 L. Li et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 268 (2020) 121928
Table 4
Optimal economic and environmental performance of different scenarios based on the functional unit of 1 kg of crop production.
Scenario NPV (USD/kg) Ranking Water consumption (m3/kg)
BC 3.07 5 0.016
GEG 2.45 6 0.022
OF 3.51 3 0.013
RE 3.25 4 0.013
WV 6.07 2 0.016
REWV 6.24 1 0.013
production process compared with the others. This is because the
increase of water use in irrigation is compensated by the reduced
contribution from energy consumption as it does not require any
artificial lighting and cooling. Contrarily, GEG has the highest
cradle-to-gate water consumption mainly due to its high electricity
consumption caused by the high cooling demand. This high cooling
demand can be traced back to the high solar heat gain or green-
house effect of this type of glass structure.
CO2 emission is dominantly affected by upstream electricity
production. Open field has the least CO2 emission - a net negative
value, since it has no electricity consumption while the atmo-
spheric CO2 is fixed by photosynthesis during vegetable production.
However, the net CO2 emission of the indoor scenarios are still
positive since the carbon emissions from energy consumption in
these scenarios are too large to be offset. GEG has the largest CO2
emission among all since it has a large cooling demand as afore-
mentioned. Comparing BC, RE, and WV, it shows that replacing the
fossil-fuel energy source by renewable energy significantly helps to
reduce the CO2 emission but replacing chemical fertilizer by waste-
derived fertilizer may not have a significant effect.
Land occupation is mainly raised by the vegetable production
activity and sometimes due to the utilization of solar energy. RE and
REWV have the largest land occupation as a large space is required
to install solar panels to meet the electricity demand. Compared
with BC, WV has a smaller land occupation since producing fertil-
izer from food waste has less land occupation than the production
of chemical fertilizer. Comparing BC, GEG, and OF, it seems that
varying the structure of the farm does not have a large impact on
the land footprint required to produce each unit of the crop.
However, the modular plant factory is more flexible than GEG and
OF and several modules can be stacked up to increase the yield of
each unit of land in times.
Overall, the result indicates that replacing the energy source
from fossil-fuel based grid electricity by renewable solar energy
will help reduce water consumption and carbon emission. How-
ever, it has a disadvantage of increased land occupation. Consid-
ering the pros and cons of indoor and outdoor farming, indoor
farming has less water consumption, CO2 emission, and land
occupation than the open field for onsite vegetable production.
However, the total water consumption and carbon emission for the
open-field agriculture are less than an indoor design taking into
account the impact of the production of input material upstream.
Further comparing the two types of indoor farming structure, the
plant factory seems to be a better indoor farming option than the
glass-enclosed greenhouse for a tropical climate. By good insulation
of walls and elimination of windows, a plant factory receives less
heat gain from solar radiation and result in less cooling demand for
crop cultivation in hot weather. Although artificial lighting is
necessary for a plant factory, the plant factory option still consumes
less total energy than a greenhouse owing to the saving in cooling.
Lastly, replacing chemical fertilizers by beer-residue-derived fer-
tilizer does not seem to have a significant impact on water con-
sumption and CO2 emission, but it incurs less land occupation and
brings greater profit potential as aforementioned.
Ranking CO2 emission(kg CO2-eq/kg) Ranking Land occupation (m2/kg) Ranking
2 1.44 5 0.014 2
3 2.82 6 0.016 3
1 0.13 1 0.016 3
1 0.22 3 0.040 5
2 1.43 4 0.013 1
1 0.21 2 0.038 4
As a summary of the economic and environmental evaluations, a
ranking of the scenarios based on NPV, water consumption, CO2
emission, and land occupation is shown in Table 4 (1 indicate the
highest preference while 6 is the least preferred). A demonstration
of the breakdown of the key contributors that affect the economic
and environmental performance is shown in Fig. 7, using the most
economic scenario (REWV) as an example.
REWV has the best economic performance among all the sce-
narios. Its water consumption and carbon emission are also within
the top two lowest. However, it has a large land occupation caused
by the installation of the solar PV system. As one possible solution
inspired by the concept of vertical farming, a vertical layout of solar
panels can also be considered to deal with the problem of ineffi-
cient land use for solar power utilization. Following REWV, WV has
the second largest NPV, second smallest water consumption, and
minimum land occupation. However, its CO2 emission is not the
smallest, which is larger than the open-field agriculture and plant
factory with renewable integration. Open-field farming ranks the
3rd in cost efficiency. Its water consumption and CO2 emission are
also the smallest. However, it is not as flexible and space-efficient as
plant factories which can be easily stacked up to increase unit area
production yield. The remaining options are not as recommended
as the top three since they are less attractive in economic and
environmental sustainability. Particularly, a greenhouse structure is
not recommended for farming in Singapore and other tropical cities
since a lot of heat from solar radiation will be trapped in the
greenhouse, which is not suitable for the cultivation of most of the
crops and would consume a lot of energy if cooling is applied.
When considering crop cultivation in tropical weather, although
indoor farming systems can overcome the technical obstacles in
planting seasonal crops in the tropical area, it may not be an
economically or environmentally sustainable choice. The most
basic scenario BC will be used as an example for illustration. The
NPV for the production in the BC-type plant factory of the eight
types of crops considered in this study is shown in Fig. 8. The OF
scenario was also included as a benchmark. Lettuce, broccoli,
spinach, and cabbage are typical cool-climate crops. Therefore, as
shown by the OF curve in Fig. 8, it is not generating any profit when
they are planted outdoors in such a hot climate as Singapore.
However, as indicated by the solid curve, it is not economically
viable to do it using the plant factory option, either. Only planting
Asian crops Cai Xin, Xian Cai, and Nai Bai are economically viable. It
is noted that Kang Kong, which is also an Asian crop, does not show
apparent economic competitiveness. This owes to its low unit
production yield and relatively cheap selling price.
Since the current BC scenario uses a two-story layout, it is un-
certain whether the number of stacked stories will affect the situ-
ation. As a follow-up discussion, the single-story and three-story
scenarios are evaluated. By comparing the BC scenarios, it can be
found that adding more levels by stacking up more plant-factory
modules will increase the NPV of planting Xian Cai, Cai Xin, Nai
Bai, and lettuce, while further decreasing the profitability of Broc-
coli, Spinach, Kang Kong, and Cabbage. It is worth noting that the
plantation of lettuce in Singapore can be changed from an
 L. Li et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 268 (2020) 121928
Fig. 7. Breakdown of the annual cash flow, water consumption, CO2 emission, and land occupation for REWV.
Fig. 8. Net present value of an open field and multi-story plant factories for the eight
types of crops.
uneconomic production to a profitable option by adding the
number of vertical layers of the farm.
5. Conclusion
In this work, we proposed a framework for the simulation,
assessment, and optimization of urban farming systems in order to
13
provide convenient decision support for the stakeholders to design
economically viable farming systems and assess their environ-
mental performance. The case study demonstrated the applicability
of the proposed framework in evaluating different farming system
configurations and finding out the best system design by standard
comparison. The sustainability in the economic and environmental
performance of the different scenarios was quantified using net
present value, water consumption, CO2 emission, and land occu-
pation indexes. The optimum crop choice and the growing condi-
tions of a Singapore-based farming system for six different
scenarios were identified using the proposed framework.
It was found that Cai Xin and Xian Cai are the most suitable and
economically attractive crops to be planted in Singapore. The most
profitable system design for a vertical farm in Singapore among all
the studied alternatives was REWV e the plant factory design with
no window, complete artificial lighting, PV system, and beer-
residue-derived fertilizer. This design also has the smallest water
consumption and moderate CO2 emission. Besides, the results also
bring some implications in pursuing sustainable urban farming in
general tropical cities. Firstly, the greenhouse structure is not rec-
ommended for farming in Singapore and other tropical cities since
a lot of heat from solar radiation will be trapped in the greenhouse,
which is not suitable for the cultivation of most of the crops and
would consume a lot of energy if cooling is applied. On the other
hand, using a plant factory modular design as the farm structure
may bring more net present value and occupies less land than an
open field. Secondly, using renewable solar PV systems for
14 L. Li et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 268 (2020) 121928
electricity supply has a longer payback time, but it may bring more
net economic benefit than using electricity generated from fossil
fuels in the places where solar radiation is abundant, which is
usually the case for tropical cities. Using solar PV also has a lower
water consumption and CO2 emission than using electricity from
the grid. Although a solar PV system may require a large space for
receiving solar radiation, a vertical layout of the PV panels like the
vertical farm can be considered as a possible solution to reduce the
land area required. Thirdly, using beer-residue-derived fertilizer is a
measure of waste valorization that practices the circular economy.
It brings more net present value and results in a shorter payback
period compared with using chemical fertilizers, meanwhile
reducing wastes in cities, and may have a smaller land occupation
than using chemical fertilizers.
On the whole, the proposed framework can be a convenient
quantitative tool for the design, assessment, and comparison of the
urban farming systems. Based on the current multi-dimensional
sustainability assessment and optimization, this framework can
be further empowered by the internet of things, machine learning
methods, and automatic control systems to truly realize precision
agriculture for higher profitability and cleaner production.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing
financial interests or personal relationships that could have
appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Lanyu Li: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Valida-
tion, Investigation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review &
editing, Visualization. Xian Li: Methodology, Software, Validation,
Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Visualization.
Clive Chong: Conceptualization, Validation, Resources. Chi-Hwa
Wang: Conceptualization, Supervision, Funding acquisition.
Xiaonan Wang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing - review
& editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition.
Acknowledgment
This work was supported by the National Research Foundation,
Prime Minister’s Office, Singapore under its Campus for Research
Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE) program (Grant
Number R-706-000-103-281 and R-706-001-102-281) and the
Singapore RIE2020 Advanced Manufacturing and Engineering
(AME) IAF-PP grant “Cyber-physical production system (CPPS) to-
wards contextual and intelligent response” by the Agency for Sci-
ence, Technology and Research under Grant No. A19C1a0018.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.121928.
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