Digital garden in bloom

House of Digitalization: Green Facade and Courtyard Connect Sustainability and Digitalization

Gardens and quality of life have been top priorities in Tulln for years. At the beginning of the year, the House of Digitalization opened as a flagship project in the field of digitalization. In the future, sustainability and digitalization will become increasingly intertwined in the ‘Green Smart City’ of Tulln.

Governor Johanna Mikl-Leitner: “In Lower Austria, we want to implement digitalization where it best benefits the region and its people. This is evident in examples such as the digital state administration, and it should be even more noticeable in the future wherever digitalization makes our everyday lives and our business location more sustainable. With flagship projects like the House of Digitalization and, in particular, this pilot project, the ‘Digital Garden,’ we are making a crucial contribution to this in Lower Austria. Green facades like this one contribute to climate protection and, thanks to sensors, can grow and flourish automatically, ecologically, and with the careful use of resources.” A blue-and-yellow flagship project that highlights the synergies between digitalization and sustainability.

To symbolically demonstrate this commitment, the House of Digitalization features a digital green facade and a digital garden in its courtyard. It fulfills the core criteria of the Lower Austrian environmental movement "Nature in the Garden"—namely, the avoidance of chemical-synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, as well as peat—and meets the digital requirements of a House of Digitalization.

In a pilot project with Tulln-based Salzgeber GmbH, the green facade and courtyard were equipped with various LoRaWAN sensors (including a weather station, leaf sensors, soil sensors to measure moisture, temperature, and conductivity, and sensors for irrigation analysis). LoRaWAN stands for Long Range Wide Area Network and refers to a long-range yet energy-efficient wireless network. The LoRaWAN sensors collect data, connect it with other "House of Digitalization building data," and then analyze and visualize it using the Salzgeber Internet of Things (IoT) Profiler.

“Digitalization is a part of our everyday lives, including in ecological gardening. Newly designed green spaces, such as those at the House of Digitalization, are intended to demonstrate how digital solutions can support the maintenance of green spaces,” emphasize Christa Lackner and Matthias Wobornik, managing directors of “Nature in the Garden,” and Lukas Reutterer and Claus Zeppelzauer, managing directors of ecoplus Digital.