Developing solutions for dealing with water and food scarcity: Atmospheric water generator and urban farm tower

For the first time in world history, more than half of the world population lives in towns and cities. According to the United Nations, urban areas are expected to absorb most of this population growth over the next four decades. With the world number of urban inhabitants estimated to grow from the present 3.9 billion to 6.3 billion people by 2050, the vast majority of this surplus will be living in slums with inadequate or non-existent water, health or sanitation systems. Today more than 156 million urban dwellers, live without immediate access to water. In places like Mumbai India, where the average yearly humidity is of 75%, the problem of water scarcity can be solved with minimal infrastructure with the use of atmospheric water generators. There are 3.1 quadrillion gallons of water in the atmosphere at any given time. While the average humidity in your home or office is 50%, an atmospheric water generator can produce water from humidity as low as 35%. This means in a place like Mumbai, a single atmospheric water generator can produce up to 5000 litters of water a day. The production of this amount of water in multiple locations within a slum has the potential to solve the water crisis by producing clean, filtered, free, accessible water and by doing so eliminating health and sanitation issues. The proposed project in this paper will address the use of this technology while at the same time using it to solve nutrition problems in the same slums by serving also as a water resource for urban farms designed to produce fruits, vegetables and mushrooms in the same structure that houses the atmospheric water generator. The proposed tower will grow hydroponic produce within the slum, cutting transportation and packaging costs. The idea is to create a network of interdependent facilities that directly serve large numbers of people through a process of urban acupuncture producing services that require minimal maintenance and the possibility of creating local jobs while helping solve the water and food crisis in slums in the developing world.