Real-Time Anomaly Detection in Cold Chain Transportation Using IoT Technology

There are approximately 88 million tonnes of food waste generated annually in the EU alone. Food spoilage during distribution accounts for some of this waste. To minimise this spoilage, it is of utmost importance to maintain the cold chain during the transportation of perishable foods such as meats, fruits, and vegetables. However, these products are often unfortunately wasted in large quantities when unpredictable failures occur in the refrigeration units of transport vehicles. This work proposes a real-time IoT anomaly detection system to detect equipment failures and provide decision support options to warehouse staff and delivery drivers, thus reducing potential food wastage. We developed a bespoke Internet of Things (IoT) solution for real-time product monitoring and alerting during cold chain transportation, which is based on the Digital Matter Eagle cellular data logger and two temperature probes. A visual dashboard was developed to allow logistics staff to perform monitoring, and business-defined temperature thresholds were used to develop a text and email decision support system, notifying relevant staff members if anomalies were detected. The IoT anomaly detection system was deployed with Musgrave Marketplace, Ireland’s largest grocery distributor, in three of their delivery vans operating in the greater Belfast area. Results show that the LTE-M cellular IoT system is power efficient and avoids sending false alerts due to the novel alerting system which was developed based on trip detection

New Multidisciplinary Approaches for Reducing Food Waste in Agribusiness Supply Chains

This reprint is a collection of research articles that highlight the achievements of the team of the European project called REAMIT. REAMIT was funded by Interreg North-West Europe and ERDF. The term REAMIT stands for “Improving Resource Efficiency of Agribusiness supply chains by Minimising waste using Big Data and Internet of Things sensors.” The main aim of the REAMIT project was to reduce food waste in agrifood supply chains by using the power of modern, digital technologies (e.g., the Internet of Things (IoT), sensors, big data, cloud computing and analytics). The chapters in this reprint provide detailed information of the activities of the project team.The chapters of this reprint were published as articles in the Special Issue titled ”New Multidisciplinary Approaches for Reducing Food Waste in Agribusiness Supply Chains” published in the journal Sustainability. For ease of readability and flow, the book is divided into four distinct parts.In Part 1, the project members provided a comprehensive review of the existing literature. Part 2 is devoted to the in-depth discussions of the development, adaptation, and applications of these technologies for specific food companies. While the project team worked with a number of food companies including human milk, fresh vegetables and fruits, meat production, this part discusses four different applications.Part 3 presents a detailed analysis of our case studies. A general life-cycle analysis tool for implementing technology for reducing food waste (REAMIT-type activities) is presented in Chapter 7. A specific application of this tool for the case study on a human milk bank is presented in Chapter 8. In Chapter 9, we developed a novel mathematical programming model to identify the conditions when food businesses will prefer the use of modern technologies for helping to reduce food waste.The final part, Part 4, is devoted to summarising learnings from the project and developing some policy-oriented guidelines. Chapter 10 reviews the current state of corporate reporting guidelines for reporting on food waste. Chapter 11 presents the important leanings from the REAMIT project on the motivations for food companies in reducing waste and the associated challenges. Business models are discussed, and some policy guidelines were developed.We gratefully acknowledge the generous funding received from the Interreg North-West Europe for carrying out our activities. The content of Chapter 10 was funded additional funding received from the University of Essex. We believe that the reprint and individual chapters will be of interest to a wide and various audience and will kindle interest in food companies, technology companies, business support organisations, policy-makers and members of the academic community in finding ways to reduce food waste with and without the use of technology