DirtSat

Two thirds of the world's population is projected to live in urban areas by 2050. That represents 5.7 billion mouths to feed, of which nearly 9% will be food insecure. Tackling food insecurity in inner cities when default solutions are reliant on complex supply chains, transporting food from hundreds, if not thousands of miles away introduces too much room for waste. 

DirtSat builds on existing city infrastructure to create more livable, sustainable and connected city neighborhoods. Connecting multiple rooftops through IoT and geospatial data enables micro-climate monitoring in real-time and allows cities to develop agriculture in areas most affected by urban heat islands or in areas with the least amount of available fresh food options. Each rooftop adds to both local food production capabilities which can be converted to school lunch or food assistance programs, and simultaneously helps reduce ambient temperatures in the most vulnerable pockets of the city.

DirtSat is accelerating food security and climate resilience goals for smart cities. Food insecurity and climate change affect nearly every corner of the globe. With ⅔ of the global population projected to live in urban areas by 2050, the number of food insecure will reach nearly 577 million in these same areas. The US alone reports 35 million food insecure, according to the USDA. 

Urban communities depend on rural producers for basic sustenance, but rural producers are buckling under the pressure to streamline operations and squeeze maximum efficiencies out of their fields. At the existing rate, rural farmers would need to become 75% more efficient to continue feeding a growing global population. This model is neither sustainable nor equitable. 

Similarly, temperatures continue to rise in cities where green space is diminished in favor of development. In the US, nearly 3.7% of arable land is lost to urbanization each year. The small tracts of open land that do exist are generally sold for commercial development instead of conversion into farmable plots. The effect is an extreme loss of habitat for pollinators and migrating species, and a growing inability to provide local fresh food options within inner city communities.

The DirtSat network of farms delivers a measurable impact to cities implementing sustainable development goals. We can affect the ambient temperatures surrounding the agricultural green spaces by cooling up to 5°F, we reintroduce wildlife habitat back into the urban hardscape, and we seek to provide nearly 1/2 of the daily recommended intake of fruits and vegetables per person/day as suggested by the CDC. 

The technology we are developing to provide this expansive data ecosystem is divided into three segments: Indexing - to capture and identify all of the viable rooftops on a city-wide scale to help plan the agriculture network implementation holistically utilizing customized geographic information systems (GIS); Monitoring - to collect on-the-ground data at all farms using IoT sensors and in-the-air intelligence with geospatial data and analysis (GeoAI); and finally, Connecting - to synthesize the pooled data into an accessible smart city platform with predictive deep learning through AI insights. The platform provides expansive visual power to direct development, allocate resources, and gather quantitative data to measure the success of urban climate mitigation and re-greening projects.

Our solution targets inner city communities hardest hit by climate and fresh food vulnerability. Historically, these communities suffer from lack of investment and development, have fewer green spaces, and vast food deserts.  Rising temperatures further exacerbate unhealthy air quality leading to increasingly unlivable environments. By cutting down cities' total reliance on rural farms, energy consumption and carbon expenditure is reduced as transportation and refrigeration waste is removed from the supply chain. Instead valuable urban ecosystems are replenished, offering respite from climate pressures and healthy sustainable food to nourish communities from within. 

Communities have a chance to play a vital role in the growing cycles through management of the farms, as full or part time urban growers. Valuable skills can be imparted to help foster technical skills. Communities gain valuable opportunities to extend STEM learning by leveraging the integration of technology platforms like big data - cloud applications, geospatial data, IoT, and AI as an amplifier of traditional growing techniques.

DirtSat is currently working on two proof of concept projects in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City. We are partnering with an array of private, commercial, and community organizations to help us develop technology that is usable and beneficial across a range of ability levels. By partnering with many stakeholders, we are ensuring the communities we hope to serve are able to reap the benefits of the platform.

DirtSat builds on existing city infrastructure to create more livable, sustainable and connected city neighborhoods. Each rooftop farm will incorporate soil sensors and a remote weather station to monitor crop development and health. Connecting multiple rooftops through IoT and geospatial data will enable micro-climate and crop yield monitoring in real-time and allow the city to develop agriculture in areas hardest hit by disappearing or non-existent green ecosystems. By targeting these areas, and planning a holistic network of rooftop farms, migration patterns and pollinator corridors can be established to help sustain and maintain a reframed urban rooftop greenway with quantitative results.

DirtSat recently concluded proof of concept IoT deployments on three rooftop farms in the San Francisco Bay Area and currently has three rooftop IoT deployments running in New York City. The California rooftops included commercial farms, community farms, and neighborhood development organizations (TNDC-SF). The New York City farms are large commercial operations in partnership with Brooklyn Grange. The director of Smart city + IoT lab for the mayor’s CTO office is also closely monitoring the results of the NYC pilots for alignment with that agency’s green infrastructure monitoring requirements. Our initial 'testers' include farm managers, operations and business development managers, and community organizers.

Several of the technologies we are leveraging currently exist on the market in some form, but we have not seen the combination of technologies developed into an end-to-end solution for smart cities to tackle food insecurity and climate resilience goals (geospatial intelligence, AI, and IoT). We are developing proprietary algorithms to allow us to index all viable rooftops for the cities we engage with for agriculture development. Once operational, the index and machine learning training models will be adaptable to any city- anywhere, allowing us to scale regionally, nationally and globally with sustainability at the forefront of development. We have also factored in opportunities for cities to funnel food into schools and food assistance programs, the development of incentive programs for farm development to capture desired data (stormwater runoff, evapotranspiration, carbon sequestration), as well as develop sustainable spin-off businesses based on our platform, as visibility is a key attribute of our business model.

The commercial farm rooftops we are currently running our PoC on are the largest rooftop soil farms in the US.  Metrics provided by Brooklyn Grange in NYC, indicate their newest farm, which encompasses 3.2 acres, is capable of not only producing 30,000 lbs of vegetables per year, but also able to manage over 175,000 gallons of stormwater per storm cycle (NYC DEP, 2019). With all three rooftop farms (encompassing 5.5 total acres) operated in NYC, they estimate a magnitude of over 1 million gallons of rainfall retained through the raised soil beds as well as 80,500 lbs of fruit and vegetables per season. That means we are currently reaching 40,250 mouths with at least one daily serving of fruit or vegetable (2 cups), as recommended by the CDC. If we expand into three cities with five rooftops/city in one year, we can bring the number we reach to 152,750 mouths. If we continue on the same trajectory and expand into 12 cities in five years with five rooftops/city we will be able to reach 490,250 mouths.

These are numbers that revolve around food only. With the added green infrastructure, the benefit to surrounding communities both in terms of heat reduction of ambient air surrounding the buildings and the benefit of natural ecosystem return plus air quality effects, the number of directly impacted citizens goes up by a factor of 2-3x regarding health benefits.

We are using our own internal KPIs and the UN SDGs to measure our progress, since we fall into quite a few categories with our solution. The three primary targets are healthier citizens, communities, and cities through more sustainable food production practices and consumption, which in turn, creates a more habitable environment and re-establishes natural resources and ecosystems in urban areas. By quantifying and measuring our efforts, we are creating a circular system that creates and sustains the people and communities most affected by food insecurity and climate change. And we offer an opportunity for sustained interaction and management of these same systems with a STEM focus to help educate and nourish in the longer term. 

SDG 2 - Zero Hunger

SDG 3 - Good Health and Well-Being

SDG 9 - Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

SDG 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities

SDG 12 - Responsible Consumption and Production

SDG 13 - Climate Action

SDG 15 - Life on Land

Currently we are a small three person team consisting of one Founder (full time), one technical developer (part-time) and one junior technical developer (part-time).

Christine Tiballi (Founder & CEO) holds a MArch in Architecture and a MSc in Space Studies & Systems, She spent 15+ years in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry developing large infrastructure aviation projects (10+ US airports) serving major urban cities, and recently gained a MSc degree transitioning into the space sector. She has relevant exposure to satellite remote sensing and engineering, space law (export control), downstream business entrepreneurship, and planetary science. Her unique experience includes expertise in both on and off-planet construction techniques.

Nick Silverman (Technical Developer) holds a MS in Mechanical Engineering and a PhD in Regional Hydroclimatology. Nick has experience in predictive modeling, geospatial data science, risk and vulnerability assessments, and data management. He has worked with government agencies, nonprofits, and private companies to improve decision making around water, climate, and agricultural challenges. He has also taught international courses on stream restoration at UNESCO-IHE in the Netherlands and was an instructor on engineering ethics at the University of Washington.

Having lived in cities of large scale for most of our collective lives, we share a desire to make our cities more livable and sustainable through technology and community engagement. We see infinite potential in adaptive reuse - a  shift in perspective reveals a landscape primed with possibility.

The US has been through an incredible year of extremely disheartening political, social, and economic reckoning. What has been laid bare (again) is a system designed to support and enable white privilege. The founder and senior technical developer of DirtSat are both white. One is a gay female and the other a straight man. We walk through the world with a ton of comfort and privilege, which we acknowledge openly. Part of our excitement surrounding building a new company is that we get to write the rules of engagement. As such, we are committed to building a company that is intentionally and manifestly diverse from our founding day.

This starts with our cap table. Few companies have anyone who is neither white nor male as investors. Our first early investors were both women. We are prioritizing the sourcing of diverse candidates from day one. Access and opportunity are our hallmarks. Our commitment to diversity and inclusion also extends to our products: we are providing cities and communities with new ecosystems, data, and the means to leverage STEM learning in connection with food production. We are intentionally creating a platform for end users/consumers that are too often unseen.

There’s a lot of work to do, but we’re committed to creating a company that we can be proud of.

Our reason for applying to the Solve challenge is quite simple: we want to be a part of and grow within a community of like-minded entrepreneurs who are meeting the world's biggest challenges head on. The need for interdisciplinary savviness: technological, economic, social, and political malleability are crucial for developing companies that can make meaningful change in the world. The Solve community is precisely the environment that we want to learn from. We want to be pushed, supported, and molded into a formidable company, so that we can reach as many urban citizens globally and help make a measurable impact for good in their lives. We want to do this within a community that has the best interests of one another and our fellow global citizens at the center of our business practices and profits.

Developing multiple levels of technology to create our platform has economic barriers, as well as access barriers to government networks interested in investing in deep tech. Becoming members of the Solve community has the potential to open networking possibilities in areas we are newly discovering, but which hold the most potential for us to deploy our solutions. As we enter our crucial customer discovery phase, access to key segments and individuals is paramount to iterating our product to meet both smart city and urban agriculture needs.

A key foundation of the DirtSat company is creating more connected, livable urban communities. Our technology is enabling both communities and cities to make measurable changes to the environment, health, and quality of life for inner city inhabitants. By providing opportunities to manage food production cycles in combination with the technology platform, children and communities can gain valuable experience with geospatial intelligence, IoT, and machine learning, fostered through a hands-on approach to STEM learning. Monitoring crop health and yields, as well as hyper-local climate impacts on their neighborhood, positions these community-driven production hubs as valuable sources of data capture, climate resilience, and ecosystem revitalization for the entire smart city network. 

Inner cities globally, suffer from neglect in various forms, economic, political, social, lack of green space, and access to fresh foods. DirtSat intends to use the grant to invest further in our R&D development of the IoT and data platform, ensuring that the accessibility and usability of the platform engages all skill levels. By ensuring equitable access to the technology, we are opening the learning potential up to anyone in the community with an eagerness to learn and contribute. We are partnering with cities and community development organizations to ensure the communities we target (climate susceptibility and food insecurity) are the drivers of the farm network within their communities.

There are over eight million urban small scale farmers estimated worldwide. These are traditionally women whose efforts supplement both income and sustenance for their families. Their toil is often singular in effort, yet they contribute widely and quietly to feeding their broader communities. DirtSat seeks to connect and multiply their efforts through IoT sensor technology and a robust data network. 

By channeling and amplifying these vital solo efforts, both women’s economic status and those of their communities are affected. Providing access to additional means of income while simultaneously nurturing the environmental and sustainability efforts of cities, is a double win. Open channels to expand farming techniques and new technology paves the way for greater stewardship and care of the urban environment while also providing educational opportunities for female farmers. 

With city support, the potential for a circular economy comes into focus, as youth can see the viability of engaging in valued production and the support these efforts garner. By connecting food production with STEM and key technologies, girls and women can learn valuable skills while adding continued and visible value to themselves and their communities. Many additional businesses can form and grow from access to the data, linking delivery services to schools, restaurants or other income-based food services.

DirtSat will use the prize to develop equitable and accessible technologies that ensure women and girls play fundamental roles in the development of community based education and technology learning, as participants, as managers, and as community activists.

Developing technology that enhances climate and food security efforts is paramount to the DirtSat platform. In order to engage the very communities that we seek to empower, it is vital that the community is not simply presented with solutions, but entrusted and educated with the very operation of those tools. We believe that developing technology to tackle food insecurity and climate resilience are essential for the longevity and livability of urban centers. Fundamental to those solutions is the ability to measure and share quantitative results. 

If we are to receive additional support and funding, DirtSat will invest the funds in two critical ways: first, we will fund the development of the indexing tech segment which provides cities with a customized GIS identifying all viable infrastructure for agriculture development, cross-referenced with underlying localized threats like UHI or food deserts. This will allow for holistic planning and implementations to target the most vulnerable neighborhoods; second, we will fund our development of the data platform, including testing and pilots for two identified smart city programs in the US.

These segments represent two critical pieces of our end-to-end data platform development. These technology pieces do not live in a vacuum; we are partnering with cities and community development organizations to ensure the communities we target (climate susceptibility and food insecurity) are the drivers of the farm network within their communities.

A key foundation of the DirtSat company is creating more connected, livable urban communities. Our technology is enabling both communities and cities to make measurable changes to the environment, health, and quality of life for inner city inhabitants. By providing opportunities to manage food production cycles in combination with the technology platform, children and communities can gain valuable experience with geospatial intelligence, IoT, and machine learning, fostered through a hands-on approach to STEM learning. Monitoring crop health and yields, as well as hyper-local climate impacts on their neighborhood, positions these community-driven production hubs as valuable sources of data capture, climate resilience, and ecosystem revitalization for the entire smart city network. 

Inner cities globally, suffer from neglect in various forms, economic, political, social, lack of green space, and access to fresh foods. DirtSat intends to use the grant to invest further in our R&D development of the IoT and data platform, ensuring that the accessibility and usability of the platform engages all skill levels. By ensuring equitable access to the technology, we are opening the learning potential up to anyone in the community with an eagerness to learn and contribute. We are partnering with cities and community development organizations to ensure the communities we target (climate susceptibility and food insecurity) are the drivers of the farm network within their communities.