Motivation

The demand for resources such as drinking water, soil and food is increasing as the global population grows. In order to protect these resources and exploit them sustainably, new solutions will be needed for food production. Aquaponics is one such approach. With the high individual maintenance costs of these systems, however, they have so far proven to be unprofitable at smaller scales. The continuing development of measurement, control and regulation technology dedicated to this, however, shall drive the propagation of differently scaled aquaponic systems and thereby also their significant contribution towards sustainable food production in general. Such a decentralised application shall also reduce energy consumption as a result of the shorter transport routes and cold chains. As urban farming systems in cities, aquaponics can utilise unused waste heat from buildings to heat water and greenhouses and will spare areas important to agriculture if they are installed on factory roofs, amongst other places.