REAMIT - Call for participation in technology demonstrations - Deadline 31 December 2021
Food waste is a serious problem in the EU. Nearly 88 million tonnes of food, equivalent to €3 billion, are wasted every year in the EU. The Union has pledged halving the food waste by the year 2025. Reducing kwaste not only increases food availability but has more benefits in the form of saving significant resources (water, energy, labour, fertilisers, etc.) that formed input to the production of food.
It has been estimated that around 35% of food waste occurs when the food travels across the supply chains. In the REAMIT project, we are passionate in reducing food waste along agribusiness supply chains using new internet of Things sensors and big data technologies. We will focus on fresh food [both packaged and unpackaged] (fruits/vegetables/meat and fish) and propose to do reduce waste of these foods in the following ways:
. Tracking the quality of fresh food using sensors. Both traditional (temperature, humidity, light, vibrations, etc.) and newer (e.g., Raman spectroscopy and 3D Fluorescence spectroscopy).
2. Collecting data from sensors in the cloud and monitoring the data using automated big data technologies.
3. Contacting food owners (using smart phone Apps) as early as possible in the case of any potential loss of food quality, providing suggestions for saving the food before it becomes waste, and, thus encouraging the derivation of best value of food thus avoiding food waste.
4. Conducting big data analytics on the sensor data to bring out long term strategies for reducing food waste in NWE in the long run.
We will share the data on food quality only with the owners of the food and will not share with any other parties. For data analytics purposes, only aggregated information will be made available for public consumption and no information specific to any company will be made available.
INFORMATION GUIDE FOR APPLICANTS
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THE CANDIDATE
The REAMIT project solicits expressions of interest from agribusiness end users (involved in transporting and storing fresh food) who are interested in understanding how to reduce waste of food when it moves along the supply chain. We have some partners in the consortium that are end-users willing to explore the power of sensors and big data in reducing food waste but we need more end-users in the North West Europe (NWE) to join in this exciting project.
We will work with you in deciding the best strategies for fitting IoT sensors in trucks/warehouses to continuously monitor food quality. We will monitor the food quality and share the data on your food quality only with you. We will help you in preventing food becoming waste and in generating best value for your food (that would otherwise become a waste). We will combine data on quality of your food with similar data from other end-users in order to identify the patterns of food waste in NWE and thus help policy makers in producing well-informed policies on food waste.
What we need from you:
You will be a company dealing with transportation and/or storage of fresh food, willing to use sensors to track quality of the food and share the data to help reduce food waste in NWE region. We will work with you in identifying best ways of fitting sensors and collecting the data.
We are currently looking for end-users in Ireland, Germany, France and the Netherlands, though we are keen to recruit more end-users from all parts of NWE.
What we offer in return:
We have a small budget in the project for fitting sensors, which we will use to share a part of the costs of fitting sensors in your trucks and warehouses. We will then collect the data to perform big data analytics with support from Big Data experts in the REAMIT consortium. We will help you derive best value for your food by contacting you in advance if there are potential quality issues with your food. This strategy may help you save money in the long run. Finally, we also provide the opportunity to be a part of European Union’s efforts in reducing food waste and help in supporting a noble cause of protecting the environment.
We will follow established ethical principles while sharing and analyzing your data.
If you have interest in becoming a leader in reducing food waste in the EU and would like to participate in the REAMIT project, we invite you to contact us using the mail: openchallenge@reamit.eu or ram.ramanathan@beds.ac.uk . We will then be in touch with you and discuss your interest in detail.