Optimized soil moisture monitoring for a multi-sensor green roof and green wall system to inform irrigation and maintenance decisions

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Green roofs and walls are a nature-based solution that helps make cities more livable. They mitigate urban flooding by holding back stormwater allowing it to evapotranspirate back to the atmosphere. Evapotranspiration helps cool the urban environment which can also reduce urban heat islands effects. Green roofs and walls create multi-functional urban spaces benefiting our overall health and wellness, creating urban habitat and increasing urban biodiversity. The green sector needs better tools to demonstrate the value of green built-space installations to current and prospective customers and stakeholders. These tools do not yet exist in the market. The logistics of providing maintenance for green installations is challenged by a lack of meaningful site information and relationship management. Direct data will directly increase maintenance efficiency by lowering logistics costs. Soil moisture data is essential to ensure that green installations are healthy and thriving. Real-time soil moisture tracking is a universally used practice in agriculture sectors, golf courses and sports fields, and urban landscapes but is rarely applied to green infrastructures like green roofs and walls. This project will optimize and test a new soil moisture sensor for green roof and wall growing media. The optimized sensors will be tested in operational green roofs fr a complete growing season to determine how real-time soil moisture data can be applied to improve maintenance and reduce operational costs. This project is the first step towards developing a multi-sensor system and software technology to synthesize sensor data for irrigation and maintenance decisions for green roofs and walls.