INTELLIGENT ROOFTOP GREENHOUSES AND GREEN SKYLINE CITIES

Abstract

The paper proposes a new concept of green building, able to oppose the global warming, the Intelligent Rooftop Greenhouse iRTG, as a development of the Integrated Rooftop Greenhouse IRTG. Our approach is to re­place conventional roofs with IRTGs, which are constructively con­nected with the interior of the building by flows of energy, gazes (mainly O2 enriched air from RTG to building and CO2 enriched air from build­ing to RTG) and water in order to improve the building’s metabolism. A tight human-plant sym­biosis is created such way. iRTGs perfect this architecture by actively controlling the energy, gazes and water flows, by collecting the available renewable energy resources (geothermal, sun, wind) and by adding Internet of Things IOT features to the system, in order to connect it to a surrounding Smart City. This way iRTGs may achieve an efficient integrated management of energy, gases and water, using just existing technologies: heat pumps (water to water for building’s basement and air to air for green­house), solar panels, IOT equipment, etc., controlled in a smart/intelligent manner. If a Smart City is composed mostly of iRTG buildings it becomes a Smart Green Skyline City, with low carbon foot­print and high carbon offset. The paper provides a mathematical iRTG model.