As a result of the increasing human population, the availability of resources per capita has been vastly diminished in the last decades. Naturally, the depletion of valuable environmental assets such as water and arable land, poses a threat to mankind’s sustainable development. In this regard, various novel ideas have been proposed for processing agricultural products ecologically and sustainably; one of such ideas is vertical farming (VF). VF is a novel production technology that aims at enhancing both the yield and the product quality, by growing them in highly packed, high energy-density systems with high mass-flow rates and in a controlled environment. The technologies required for VF have been developed and successfully tested, thereby producing crops that meet the requirements of food safety, adequate nutrient content, and maximum yield. However, the extremely high biomass densities and high turnover rates employed to give rise to challenges regarding to energy efficiency and homogeneity patterns. In this work, a P-graph model is presented for the integration of VF systems. The algorithmic approach is employed to evaluate options for process integration and intensification of VF with plausible synergetic production processes into a dense urban environment. As a result, 115 integrated process alternatives are identified for the base case, with the best structure exhibiting a total cost of 41,920 EUR/y, thereby yielding reductions up to 11% for the total cost of the integrated network. The pareto front of economic performance and CO2 emission is presented to illustrate the potential benefits of integration, and the capability of the methodology to evaluate alternative designs.

The exponential development of information technology and, in this context, the latest generation of open innovation systems result in revolutionary changes in almost every industry as well as in other areas of life. From the automotive industry to the energy sector and to tourism, newcomers emerge everywhere, building on the tools of disruptive innovation, which with earlier unprecedented speeds transform their previous industry power. The essence of the smart city approach is to put the latest tools of technological advancement in serving the social, economic and ecological sustainability of cities' lives for the inhabitants as well as for the enterprises of the city. Industry 4.0 is an imagined future, which in our opinion - in direct or indirect ways - would have a fundamental influence on smart cities and their environment and regions, given that their primary goal is to improve a country's competitiveness. In our study, we review the relevant literature on the definition of and approach to innovation as well as the smart city concept in this new revolutionary age, we demonstrate relevant correlations between the concepts of disruptive innovation, smart city and Industry 4.0.