The global economy is now under threat due to the ongoing domestic and international lockdown for COVID-19. Many have already lost their jobs, and businesses have been unstable in the Corona era. Apart from educational institutions, banks, privately owned institutions, and agriculture, there are signs of economic recession in almost all sectors. The roles of modern technology, the Internet of things, and artificial intelligence are undeniable in helping the world achieve economic prosperity in the post-COVID-19 economic downturn. Food production must increase by 60% by 2050 to meet global food security demands in the face of uncertainty such as the COVID-19 pandemic and a growing population. Given COVID 19’s intensity and isolation, improving food production and distribution systems is critical to combating hunger and addressing the double burden of malnutrition. As the world’s population is growing day by day, according to an estimation world’s population reaches 9.6 billion by 2050, so there is a growing need to modify the agriculture methods, technologies so that maximum crops can be attained and human effort can be reduced. The urban smart vertical farming (USVF) is a solution to secure food production, which can be introduced at any adaptive reuse, retrofit, or new buildings in vertical manners. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive review of the concept of USVF using various techniques to enhance productivity as well as its types, topologies, technologies, control systems, social acceptance, and benefits. This review has focused on numerous issues, challenges, and recommendations in the development of the system, vertical farming management, and modern technologies approach.

Indoor hydroponics system is gaining acceptance and traction in providing practical indoor farming capabilities for urban dwellers, including in low income housing estates. However, for the low income urban dwellers, the size of their residence might restrict the design of the indoor hydroponics system, especially in terms of available floor space. Furthermore, before one starts to develop an indoor hydroponics system, it is imperative to identify users’ preferences, in terms of the types of plants to grow, price, and design to enable the researchers to develop a better indoor hydroponics system. In this study, opinions from 53 participants on indoor hydroponics systems were obtained and analysed. Four aspects were analysed via the survey: (1) customer evaluations; (2) positive value; (3) costing; and (4) purchasing proclivity. The study shows that participants prefer to grow edible plants because of their benefits. Participants also prefer systems priced at below RM100 (60.40% of the respondent). Aloe Vera (56.6% preference) and Brazilian Spinach(49.1% preference) are two types of plants most preferred by the participants. As mentioned previously, the output of this survey will be used to guide the process of developing a suitable indoor hydroponics system for the low-income urban dwellers.

Now-a-days, the hydroponic farming system with the Internet of Things (IoT) technology is increasingly becoming a trend for researchers to produce a more capable farming device or remote monitoring system. However, this intelligent system is not controlled securely and will be dangerous when system hacking occurs. Therefore, developing a secure indoor hydroponic monitoring device with multi-factor authentication (MFA) method is proposed. The research aims to develop a secure cloud-connected indoor hydroponic system via multifactor authentication on the ThingsSentral IoT platform with an MFA technique. The developed system comprises an iPhone Operating System (iOS), an Arduino node microcontroller unit and a ThingsSentral web IoT platform. A security software application on iOS phones with MFA techniques is built to authenticate devices before communicating with ThingsSentral.io. Token authentication between ThingsSentral.io and the security software application must be done before the hydroponic monitoring device can send and receive data. An indoor hydroponic monitoring system device with MFA security technique has been successfully produced from the study. An MFA security technique for iOS apps has also been successfully developed. In conclusion, using the MFA technique, this research successfully develops a high-security control and communication system between the field device and the IoT platform. Although the MFA security system developed for this IoT platform has several steps that need to be done before data can be sent to the cloud database, the users themselves can allow or prohibit a device from operating. Besides, users can also control and monitor the security between the device and the IoT platform when they operate.