SOSFood: Sustainability Optimization for Secure Food Systems

In the current environmental emergency, the food system has to become more productive, inclusive, sustainable, and resilient. SOSFood will therefore use data-exploitation and AI-based technologies to provide a holistic and comprehensive image of the EU food system and develop tailored predictive tools to support well-informed decisions of all stakeholders of the food chain, with a multi-factorial, multi-actor and multi-scale approach, thanks to its multidisciplinary consortium of experts, from private and public sectors, academia research and food system representative (consumers, producers and industries).

Although several initiatives have been taken in the same line, none has fully succeeded at considering the global picture of the system or delivering a reliable and accessible message to the target audience. Hence, SOSFood will result in a consolidated food data space focused on sustainability and health and decision-making tools adapted to each level of the chain (a predictive dashboard displaying data and predictions for industries, and a mobile app for consumers comprising an eco-healthy fingerprint visualization plot, a greening indicator of industries, reformulated European recipes promoting healthy, local and seasonal ingredients and general recommendations), following these steps: (1) creating a multi-actor network gathering social, political, legal, economic, technological, food, health, environmental and climatic data, promoting transparency and data-sharing, (2) mapping the food system scenario with a multidimensional strategy, exploiting the interoperability of data with advanced impact analysis and innovative AI-technologies, (3) co-designing solutions i.e., decision-making tools fitting the context and priorities of each user, validated through field case studies to ensure viability and representativeness.

Objectives

SOSFood aims to design, develop and validate data-driven AI-based tools that can help all actors along the food supply chain to make evidence-based sustainable decisions, through the identification of those causal factors conditioning the sustainability of their activities and offering specific suggestions for its improvement.

Link to the Project Website