Investigating transparent sustainibility in agri-food supply chains from a wider environmental, social and economic interdisciplinary perspective and through innovative technologies including Artificial Inteligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT).
Over the last few decades rapid advances in processes to collect, monitor, disclose, and disseminate information have contributed towards the development of entirely new modes of environmental monitoring and governance for supply chains.
Unfortunately, existing approaches often suffer from limitations in terms of collection and dissemination of data; over-simplification of supply chains; power dynamics influencing information inclusion/exclusion decisions; and potentially perverse outcomes regarding how the information is used, by whom and to what effect.
The EATS project will explore novel approaches for transparent sustainibility through the following questions:
What datasets, indicators and decision-making processes are relevant to the different actors participating in supply chains to realize sustainable food futures?
How do we formulate appropriate vocabularies with which to characterise sustainability practices, their context and rationale, and facilitate data capture and integration?
Can we realize a provenance-based sustainability solution for supply chains, operating across a range of technologies and organisational boundaries, that is trusted and able to facilitate pro-environmental decision-making and action?
How do we exploit sustainability data assets and technologies such as machine learning (ML) and AI to inform decision making towards net-zero, resulting in demonstrable changes to practice and behaviour?
Evaluate the role of sensors and carbon reporting tools in capturing data about agri-food processes.
Design a trusted digital platform able to manage structured sustainability data and report it across supply chain actors.
Employ the use of data-analytics and machine learning to support decision-making and action.
University of Aberdeen
Georgios is the Interdisciplinary Director of Data & Artificial Intelligence, Professor of Machine Learning and the Principal Investigator of the EATS project. Georgios’s research interests include theoretical advancements in core deep learning methodologies, primarily self-supervised learning, domain adaptation, capsule neural networks, and multimodal transformers.
University of Aberdeen
Peter Edwards is Professor of Computing Science. His interests span models of provenance, trust, information quality, transparency and accountability.
University of Leeds
Nik Watson is a Professor of Artificial Intelligence in Food. His research focus is improving the productivity, sustainability and safety of food and drink manufacturing systems through the development of intelligent online sensor technologies.
University of Dundee
Mel Woods is Professor of Creative Intelligence. Her research brings together participatory design focused on environmental issues using novel technologies and co-creation for action and change whilst engendering collective intelligence and social innovation.
Scotland’s Rural College
Hannah is Co-director of the Thriving Natural Capital Challenge Centre and Reader at SRUC. Her research interests are in how nature tech innovations can trustably validate and prove positive influence on carbon sequestration, biodiversity and nature improvements.
University of Aberdeen
Milan Markovic is Interdisciplinary Research Fellow with background in Computer Science. His interests include transparency, accountability and compliance monitoring of complex socio-technical systems supported by computational provenance models and semantic web technologies.
Scotland’s Rural College
Paul Mayfield is a senior Business Consultant at SAC Consulting Ltd., a part of Scotland’s Rural College.
University of Nottingham
David Cook has 20+ years of experience in food and beverage research. His group conducts research across the Malting and Brewing chain and working with several of the largest multi-national brewing and malting companies.
University of Dundee
Stephanie is a research assistant alongside Professor Mel Woods at the University of Dundee. Stephanie’s research is at the intersection of HCI, design and psychology, with a focus on utilising technology for decision making.
University of Aberdeen
Andy Li is a PhD research student in the field of machine learning. His research focus is efficient deep learning networks and making computationally expensive models smaller and faster whilst preserving their performance.
University of Aberdeen
Tewodros Alemu Ayall is a Research Fellow in Computer Science. His research interests focus on Machine Learning and Distributed Graph Computing. He is working towards integrating Artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) into the Agro-Food sector.
Scotland’s Rural College
Susannah Bolton is Vice Principal for Enterprise and Knowledge Exchange, an integrating role working across the divisions in SRUC, bringing together research, education, knowledge exchange, skills and commercial. She has over 30 years of experience working in the space between research and its application in practice.
Scotland’s Rural College
Rachael Ramsey is Head of Science and Research Development for Agrecalc Ltd, a carbon footprinting tool that works across the agricultural supply chain. She is an experienced project manager and agroecologist working in terrestrial ecosystems.
University of Leeds
Alex Bowler is a research assistant at the University of Leeds. He has a background in Chemical Engineering and is a member of the Food, Water, Waste research group. His research combines sensor data and machine learning techniques for process monitoring applications.
EATS is supported by the awards made by the RCUK Digital Economy programme; award references: EP/V042270/1; EP/V041657/1; EP/V041487/1; and EP/V041371/1
