AI-Powered Urban Food Intelligence for Resilient 15-Minute Neighbourhoods

The project aims to develop an AI-powered Urban Food Digital Twin that maps and continuously monitors food production capacity within urban and peri-urban areas.

Using Earth Observation, satellite imagery, drone data, GeoAI and temporal crop analysis, the platform will identify agricultural areas, classify crop types, monitor seasonal production dynamics and estimate local food production potential.

This information will be combined with 15-minute accessibility, population, food demand and urban planning data to identify:

• local food production capacity,

• food-access gaps and potential food deserts,

• opportunities for shorter farm-to-neighbourhood supply chains,

• neighbourhood-level food resilience,

• potential locations for new urban or peri-urban agriculture,

• potential reductions in food transport distance and related emissions.

The project will establish Living Labs in different European urban contexts, where municipalities, researchers, farmers, local communities and technology providers will co-design and validate the approach.

Agrovech's contribution

Agrovech will provide the technological backbone of the project, including:

Earth Observation and satellite analytics; AI-based crop mapping and classification; vegetation, water and crop-stress monitoring; drone-based high-resolution validation; temporal agricultural analytics; GeoAI; and municipal decision-support dashboards.

Our existing precision-agriculture platform already combines satellite, drone and AI technologies for large-scale agricultural monitoring and will be adapted to the urban food-system context.

Partners sought

We are particularly interested in collaborating with:

• Municipalities / local authorities willing to establish an Urban Living Lab

• Universities and research institutes working on urban planning, 15-minute cities, urban food systems or accessibility

• Organisations specialising in GIS, mobility and accessibility modelling

• Urban agriculture and food-system organisations

• Sustainability, circular economy and climate-resilience researchers

• Community organisations, cooperatives and local food networks

• An experienced European project coordinator interested in jointly developing the proposal

We are especially interested in partners from different European urban contexts to demonstrate the transferability of the solution.

Project vision

Our ambition is to move beyond static urban food maps and create a living, AI-powered urban food intelligence system:

Satellite → Crop Mapping → Production Monitoring → Food Demand → 15-Minute Accessibility → Local Supply → Municipal Decision Support

If your organisation is working on urban food systems, neighbourhood economies, 15-minute cities or urban resilience, we would be pleased to discuss a potential collaboration for DUT Call 2026.