Monitoring Plant Health of Indoor Living Walls: A Pilot Study Using Hyperspectral Imaging in a Controlled Environment
摘要
Living walls are an intensive type of vertical greenery systems that provide significant benefits for thermal comfort, air quality, and the psychological well-being of building occupants. However, this specific type of Nature-based solutions requires high levels of maintenance, which are essential to ensure healthy and visually appealing vegetation. Different systems currently exist on the market and their technical complexity underscores the need for optimized irrigation, plants design, and lighting solutions. Despite the growing adoption of living walls, particularly indoors, limited research exists on monitoring methods that could facilitate proper maintenance. In this context, this study explores the use of Hyperspectral Imaging to monitor the vegetation health of Living walls and detect early stress indicators prior to visible symptoms. This pilot hyperspectral monitoring system was tested on two Living wall prototypes installed in a controlled climatic chamber. Environmental parameters, including air temperature, relative humidity, and CO2 concentrations, were constantly monitored to isolate specific stress factors. Preliminary results revealed changes in plant health and growth across different wall portions and plant species, providing insights into the evolution of living walls under controlled conditions. These findings highlight the potential for hyperspectral imaging as an innovative tool to support future automatically maintained systems, advancing the efficiency of indoor living wall systems. In addition, future applications of this monitoring system, combining hyperspectral vegetation indices with CO2 removal rates, could enable the development of predictive models to quantify greenhouse gas sequestration relative to plant health indices under different climatic conditions.