PhD position available on "AGRIVOLTAICS: INTEGRATED STRUCTURAL OPTIMIZATION AND DATA ANALYTICS FOR DECARBONIZATION AND SMART AGRICULTURE"

A funded PhD position in Civil Engineering is available at Politecnico di Milano on the topic “AGRIVOLTAICS: INTEGRATED STRUCTURAL OPTIMIZATION AND DATA ANALYTICS FOR DECARBONIZATION AND SMART AGRICULTURE”; a brief account of motivation and objectives, and of methods and techniques to develop are reported below.

Interested people are requested to urgently contact Stefano Mariani at stefano.mariani@polimi.it

Additional details are available here https://www.dottorato.polimi.it/fileadmin/user_upload/bandi/ciclo38/bandi_aggiuntivi/nov_22/pnrr/1853_SCHEDA_ISSG-PNRR_351_TRANS-DIG_AMB_-AGRIVOLTAICS.PDF

https://www.dottorato.polimi.it/fileadmin/user_upload/bandi/ciclo38/bandi_aggiuntivi/nov_22/pnrr/APPLICATION_1853_DICA_AGRIVOLTAICS_INTEGRATED_STRUCTURAL_OPTIMIZATION_A.pdf

Motivation and objectives of the research in this field

Agrivoltaics is the integration of energy production and crop production and quality in smart farming, hopefully in accordance with landscape design for the countryside. This integration does not look simple, since crops and photovoltaics sometimes have competing requirements in relation to solar radiation. Structural solutions need to be optimized in their shapes and data need to be continuously collected and processed with powerful data analytics methodologies, so that detrimental effects of climate change could be limited. This project is therefore going to address some of the problems clearly stated in the PNRR, specifically in mission 2, also in accordance with the European Green Deal. Within the action M2C1, this is going to improve the environmental performance, the yield and the competitiveness of farms thanks to the design of a sensor -driven, smart water irrigation system in line with precision agriculture (see investment 2.3 regarding new technologies and digitalization). Agrivoltaics is specifically mentioned as investment 1.1 in action M2C2. Furthermore, in action M2C4 the investment 1.1 envisages the use of sensor networks to reduce the risks related to climate chance; in this project the idea is developed to increase the safety of crops, and thereby the resilience of the entire system, against extreme events.

Methods and techniques that will be developed and used to carry out the research

Recent events linked to the climate change have caused a huge loss of money in relation to vinery and, more generally, fruit farms. For instance, due to hailstorms and spring frosts it has been reported that, only in 2021 and in Lombardia, around 20M Euros were lost in the revenues linked to local production. Solutions giving benefits in case of extreme events, in accordance e.g. to a structural design which is going to be filed as a patent in the coming weeks by the proposer, can substantially help in making our agriculture, not only in the Pianura Padana, more resilient against such possible events. By means of Agro-Photovoltaics or Agrivoltaics, the integration of photovoltaic panels in the farms would provide a benefit in terms of decarbonization, as power would be locally produced and made at disposal for a continuous monitoring of the health conditions of the structure carrying the panels and the entire energy production system, and also of the crops, if not to be sold to the network. Since data brought from satellite observations are not time-continuous and might be affected by temporary cloudy conditions at the time they are collected, a local network of sensors, together with agro-hydrological models to monitor the health of plants would provide a means to increase by a large amount the crop production, if possible, or at least the quality and, therefore, the revenues for farmers. In this way, as a side effect in the global situation we are living, we do expect that also irrigation procedures can be improved to make attractive some cultivations currently not remunerative in Italy, so to make our agriculture a bit more independent of the import from other Countries. Overall, an impact to our Country is expected thanks to the decarbonization and green transformation linked to the smart use of a renewable energy.