Learning from plants: a new framework to approach water-harvesting design concepts

Abstract

Purpose

This paper's main objective is to focus on the water-harvesting ability of plants and try to implement a solution-based method to outline a plant-inspired design framework.

Design/methodology/approach

The current paper aims to provide a step-by-step approach to the biological-inspired design by looking deeply at plants' mechanisms and features to harvest water and conduct a method to learn them in an organized way.

Findings

In addition to the proposed framework, the fundamental water-harvesting principles of plants including increasing condensation, reducing transpiration and facilitating transportation have been extracted by investigating several adaptable plants. The relevant factors related to each of these three principles are introduced and can potentially ease the process of bio-inspiration as it contributes to the findability and understandability of a particular biologic strategy. As a result, this framework can be used to the formation of novel designs in different disciplines. In this process, the development of an architectural design concept is presented as an example.

Originality/value

The current global issue about the shortage of water leads researchers to learn adaptability from nature and increase the demands of using bio-inspired strategies. The novelty of this study is to introduce a water-harvesting design path, which has been presented using a four-step-plant-to-design process. Learning from plants' water-harvesting strategies will contribute to efficiency in different disciplines. The findings of this study have important implications for developing bio-inspired water-harvesting materials and systems. Moreover, the findings add substantially to the understanding of water-harvesting architecture and play an important role in bridging the gap between theory and practice.