Monitoring of a Productive Blue-Green Roof Using Low-Cost Sensors

A productive blue-green roof, being intensive, involves considerable operating costs. Low-cost sensor technologies could provide reliable solutions that integrate real-time management practices in distributed monitoring of the changes that plants and soil experience in such roofs. An economical operation and maintenance approach will reduce costs, rendering it a more viable alternative. This research assesses the extent to which a low-cost image sensor can be deployed to perform continuous and automated monitoring of a productive rooftop farm. It also includes a rooftop thermal performance analysis for additional crops. An RGB-depth image sensor is used in this study to monitor crop growth. Images collected from weekly scans have been processed by segmentation to estimate plant height. Six other crop types have been observed using a cloud-based IoT platform to understand how various crop varieties react regarding thermal performance. Potato, beet, and zucchini showed sound cooling effects in the late afternoon in summer.