Biomimicry Challenge leads to Nature Inspired Water Collection

What a beautiful system! In only the second year of the Biomimicry Global Design Challenge, an international design competition and accelerator program that crowdsources nature-inspired climate change solutions, has awarded $100,000 to the NexLoop team for their Water Harvesting system that feeds roof top urban agriculture with much less energy consumption than conventional methods.

Team NexLoop developed the AquaWeb to help urban local food producers collect, filter, store, and distribute atmospheric moisture with a modular, all-in-one water sourcing and management system. AquaWeb harnesses freely available rain and fog and uses passive strategies to distribute this water so that urban farms, including greenhouses, indoor vertical farms, and container farms.

Each aspect of AquaWeb’s design was inspired by living systems. These include how cribellate orb weaver spider webs collect fog from the air, how drought-tolerant plants like the crystalline ice plant store water, and how mycorrhizal fungi like the Jersey cow mushroom distribute water. The team also looked to the dwarf honey bee’s hexagonal nest structure for AquaWeb’s efficient and modular design.

Excerpted from Biomimicy Press Release

can save energy and become more resilient to disturbances.