Cloud-based platforms for monitoring and managing climate-smart urban farming systems

Abstract

Cloud-based platforms are emerging as essential technologies for supporting climate-smart urban farming systems, enabling real-time monitoring, predictive analytics, and data-driven decision-making for enhancing resource efficiency and resilience. Urban agriculture faces multiple constraints, including limited land availability, fluctuating climatic conditions, and increasing uncertainties related to temperature and precipitation variability. To address these challenges, cloud-based platforms offer scalable solutions that integrate sensor networks, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and machine-learning models for tracking environmental parameters, optimising irrigation, and managing crop health in urban farms. This article examines the evolution, applications, and benefits of cloud-based systems in climate-smart agriculture, focusing on controlled-environment agriculture, rooftop farms, and vertical farming facilities. Through a synthesis of pre-2024 literature, the research highlights how cloud-enabled monitoring supports energy optimisation, adaptive climate control, greenhouse gas mitigation, and early stress detection in plants. Additionally, the article discusses data interoperability issues, cybersecurity concerns, and the need for standardisation in cloud-IoT architectures for urban farms. The review further identifies existing gaps in adoption, especially in low-resource settings, where connectivity, maintenance costs, and digital literacy remain significant barriers. The research proposes a hypothesis that cloud-integrated climate-smart platforms significantly improve urban farm productivity and resource-use efficiency compared with conventional monitoring approaches. The objectives of the research include identifying key technological trends, assessing operational efficiencies gained through cloud-based monitoring, and evaluating their potential to support scalable sustainable agriculture in rapidly growing cities. Findings suggest that such platforms enhance decision accuracy, promote sustainable water management, and strengthen resilience to climate variability by enabling remote supervision of critical microclimate variables. The review concludes that cloud-based platforms represent a transformative step towards sustainable urban food systems, yet long-term success requires improved data security, affordable connectivity, and cross-platform compatibility.