gms | German Medical Science

Many municipalities in Nepal are growing rapidly. Due to rapid urbanization, agricultural lands have been converted into buildings and infrastructures. This has negatively impacted the urban environment with a decrease in greeneries, local food production. Urban farming is considered as one of the strategies to address social, economic and environmental gaps in cities. Beyond improving food security and local food production, urban farming has the potentials to improve microclimate, mitigating the adverse effects of urban health island, promoting psychological well-being, contribute in waste management [1]. Among various forms of urban farming, one of the unused resources or capacities of cities is flat roofs, especially in densely populated inner-city areas where other open spaces, gardens may be lacking [2].

Research on rooftop farming in the context of Nepal is being conducted to understand people’s response, interest and motivation towards rooftop farming. In practice, municipalities and local non-governmental organization started a few initiatives such as providing training on farming technique, distributing farming kits to a few residents, providing funding support to households, to encourage rooftop farming among residents. Nonetheless, rooftop farming has not been developed in every household. Besides social factors, uncertainty and fear in building structures, lack of training is considered as barriers to wide adoption. This suggests that a comprehensive approach to the development of strategy promoting rooftop farming is needed in cities. Nonetheless, due to a lack of comprehensive information on the current situation and potential of rooftop farming in municipalities, promoting rooftop farming in municipalities has been carried out on an ad hoc basis.

Against this background, this project intended to develop data-driven support for the municipality on the identification and assessment of rooftop farming in the municipality. Using geospatial technology together with OpenStreetMap, UAV and adopting volunteered geographic information (VGI) approach, the project mapped the current state and analysed the future potential of rooftop farming in Banepa municipality. Municipal practitioners were also involved at various stages of the project, however, not without challenges. In total, 7 female and 20 male volunteers were engaged for two months in mapping rooftop gardening and other features in the municipality. Results on mapping shows that currently only 19% of overall households (n=11,757) are engaged in rooftop farming. Out of those households that are suitable for rooftop farming (e.g. there is roof access, n=7,221), only 30% (area=0.11 sq.km) are found to be engaged in the rooftop. Further, the results shows that 0.58 sq.km area are still available in the municipality for future rooftop farming. All this information was made accessible to municipal practitioners via a web application (Figure 1 [Fig. 1]). Nonetheless, the use of such information in municipal planning is yet to be fully realized.