One of the lines of research that investigates how to make cities the more sustainable as possible is based on the savings in irrigation water used in public gardens and parks. In addition to help making the cities ecologically sustainable, all the activities involved on it should be also economically viables.

To achieve this goal, a group of researchers from the Department d’Informàtica de Sistemes i Computadors (DISCA) of the Campus d’Alcoi have implemented a IoT prototype with the aim at converting activities derived from agriculture into sustainable activities. The name of the smartBCL (smartBANCAL) project is composed by two parts. The starting ‘s’ is an abbreviation for smart, as it is an intelligent and autonomous system. The BANCAL base pays homage to our Arabic and Moorish ancestors who, with their mastery of water, were the first engineers to apply the concept of sustainability in traditional agriculture (usual words as séquia, aljub, alcavó or bancal are still in use nowadays). In its etymology, it is very likely that the word bancal comes from the Moorish manqála.

Bancal.- Wall made of stones, according to the technique of the dry stone, without mortar, to hold and contain the soil on the face of a mountain and use it as a dry field, making a kind of large steps.

Translated from the Diccionari General de la Llengua Valenciana

Objectives

• to create an irrigation system that optimises the use of water in such a way that the plant is supplied with the exact quantity
• to create an irrigation system that can adapt itself to the diversity of external stimuli: climatology, type of land, type of plant…
• once trained, the system must be autonomous and independent of the human interaction

System

In a very simple way the smartBCL monitors in real time the humidity of the soil at different depths so that, at the moment of watering, the smart subsystem is able to calculate the exact amount of water needed by the plants. Components:

• network of sensor devices that get the soil humidity in real time
• a control device to run the irrigation actuations
• a backend to get and store the data sent by the network of devices
• a frontend (webapp) to interact with the final user
• a networking protocol to communicate all the components in the system
• a smart subsystem to calculate the irrigation duration (water comsumption) for each different actuation. This subsystem includes internal and external factors such as: humidity measurements to different depths, the weather forecast (for example, we can stop the system if the forecast is rainy for the next day) or the history of irrigation actions run before

Advantages

• low-cost system to ensure the economical viability of future smartBCL projects to be developed in mid-sized cities
• low-powering system that can operates with several years of powering autonomy
• water-saving system as it determines the exact quantity of water (watering interval) needed for the plants at each moment
• savings in human resources, as the system works by itself taking the decisions (in terms of watering interval) without any human interaction
• this is a modular approach suitable for agricultural and gardening research since, once the hardware is implemented and deployed on the real scenario , the smart sub-system can be developed and improved independently from the hardware

Colaborations

The very first smartBCL prototype was deployed and is working in one of the most iconic gardens of the city of Alcoi. This is thanks to the colaboration between the DISCA researchers and the Departament d’Innovació together with the Departament d’Inspecció General de Serveis (Ajuntament d’Alcoi).