Abstract
NEXTCART aims to design, demonstrate, and validate the impact of a visibility-, knowledge- and education-enabling ICT system to promote food ecosystem sustainability. It explores how a new conscious, sustainable, aware, and nutritionally balanced consumer experience, aided by the proposed ICT system, could change the FSC processes according to a bottom-up approach. NEXTCART addresses two main issues of the Agri-Food Industry and FSCs: the lack of consumer food education and sustainability. Consumer food education is addressed by increasing visibility on FSC processes and their externalities and by enhancing awareness of food nutritional impacts and healthy eating habits for disease prevention and waste reduction. To reach consumer visibility, NEXTCART aims at building a multidisciplinary knowledge inventory following a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) paradigm. This inventory will be able to gather records from heterogeneous data sources linked to the existing traceability/IoT infrastructures through appropriate interfaces. Innovative, tailored data integration, search and loading strategies will be tested, along with quality control and data maintainability methods. Nodes, processes, actors, and production and distribution entities involved in the FSC will be mapped. A FSC Digital Twin is designed and developed to virtualize the physical food flows, estimating time, energy and water consumption, labor, packaging, resources utilization, traveling distances, and shelf-life decay. To address consumer awareness, the hybrid data architecture will map the nutritional content of foods and tailored nutritional, allowing the coupling of food functional properties with consumer profiles. This profile is defined by body composition, gender and age, health, previous diseases or medical indications and personal targets. Such information is conveyed through the integrated ICT system using different consumer interfaces. A QR Code printed on the product batch quantifies FSC externalities. The shopping cart will be equipped with a Digital Smart Touch Screen (DSTS) to allow QR Code reading and to inform the consumer on products’ environmental impacts. A Mobile App links the in-store experience with the historical consumption profile of the consumer. Through food purchasing history, average consumption rates of individual or family purchasing can be quantified and used to set reordering levels, prevent food waste and suggest sustainable alternatives. Two educational experiences are expected project results. In the Mobile App, a Graphic User Interface (GUI) will represent a Consumer Avatar assimilating the impacts generated on the individual's health and state of fitness. The Smart cart will summarize the environmental impacts of the selected food basket thus contributing to a collective educational experience. Through a new conscious shopping experience NEXTCART closes the circle of continuous bottom-up improvement towards Food Industry sustainability. RESULTS ACHIEVED The objectives defined in the project have been achieved, in line with their exploratory nature. The project successfully addressed the two main issues, consumer food education and supply chain sustainability, by designing and prototyping and testing a multidisciplinary tools and interfaces capable of integrating environmental, nutritional, and consumer-related information. The project’s knowledge inventory has been realized through the collection and classification of heterogeneous data on food supply chain processes, products, and nutritional properties, organized within a relational database. While the original plan considered hybrid or graph-based architectures, the project implemented and validated a relational approach, resulting in SQL scripts and entity–relationship schemes. Further outcomes include the development of prototypal dashboards and interfaces demonstrating how integrated information could be conveyed to consumers, with visualizations of dietary balance, nutritional needs, and sustainability indicators of the food basket. In addition, thousands of food products were classified according to dietary requirements, allergies, intolerances, and health conditions, providing the basis for personalized consumer profiles. Consumer behavior dynamics and possible scaling-up pathways of the prototype were evaluated through a structured questionnaire administered to approximately 185 respondents. The survey allowed for the assessment of user acceptability, perceived usability, and overall willingness to adopt the application, providing evidence to support future large-scale implementation strategies.
Dettagli del progetto
Responsabile scientifico: Riccardo Accorsi
Strutture Unibo coinvolte:
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale
Coordinatore:
ALMA MATER STUDIORUM - Università di Bologna(Italy)
Contributo totale di progetto: Euro (EUR) 195.094,00
Contributo totale Unibo: Euro (EUR) 122.302,00
Durata del progetto in mesi: 24
Data di inizio
28/09/2023
Data di fine:
28/02/2026
