Food Supply Chain Analytics and Sensing Initiative (FSAS)

Equitable access to safe and nutritious food is a basic societal need that impacts the health, livelihood and wellness of all humans. The ability to provide and sustain such access has become a major concern and a challenge for many countries around the world. The Food Supply Chain Analytics and Sensing (FSAS) Initiative is creating predictive analytical tools and technologies to improve the design and management of safe and reliable food supply chains that are accessible and sustainable.

Areas of Focus:

(1) Supply Chain and Market Design Optimization -- In India and other agriculture-intensive developing countries, the government has made it a priority to improve the welfare of farmers. With collaborators on the ground in India, Professors Retsef Levi and Karen Zheng are working to develop, test, and evaluate a range of interventions and decision support tools to improve the efficiency and safety of agriculture supply chains, as well as to increase the welfare of farmers and consumers. Their current projects focus on: 1) performing systematic impact analysis and optimizing the design of digital agricultural platforms that enable efficient physical supply chains in resource constrained environments; 2) analyzing the impact of different government interventions (e.g., inventory procurement and release policies, consumer subsidy schemes) on stabilizing market prices of essential commodities; and 3) developing data-driven decision support tools to help smallholder farmers optimize their production and market decisions.

(2) Management of Human Health Risks in Food Supply Chains -- 
(*) Food Safety & Adulteration Risks in China's Food Supply Chain
(*) Local Regulatory Strength in China's Food System
(*) Wholesale Market Management in China
(*) Food Safety Sensor Development

(3) Access to Healthy Food -- Professors Retsef Levi and Georgia Perakis have studied food access and the management of food waste in the United States from an operations management perspective. Their goal is to effectively increase fruit and vegetable consumption among low income households to ultimately improve health outcomes. Research focuses have included (1) household grocery shopping decision-making and the impact of interventions targeted to the household and neighborhood levels; (2) increasing the throughput and reducing the cost of fresh fruits and vegetables in the perishable supply chain by modeling information sharing scenarios ; and (3)  reducing food loss and food waste at the farm and retail levels.