Highlights from Our Webinar: How Semantic Strategies Are Transforming Agrifood Data Management?
On October 23, 2024, the STELAR and TITAN Projects hosted a webinar titled “Semantic Strategies for Enhanced Agrifood Data Management.” Lasting an engaging hour and a half, this event united experts to discuss the latest innovations in data management within the agrifood industry, with a particular focus on Knowledge Graphs.
Featuring presentations from leading researchers and industry representatives, the session offered valuable insights on leveraging semantic technologies to address data complexity in food systems.
The session opened with Julia Mitrovic from Foodscale Hub, who set the tone for the event with a warm welcome and a concise agenda overview.
Understanding Knowledge Graphs: A Foundation for Agrifood Data Management
The webinar began with an insightful talk by Catherine Roussey from INRAE, who provided an introduction to Knowledge Graphs, covering essential technologies and frameworks that power these data tools. She began by defining key terms and introduced ontologies as structured frameworks that enable the organisation of complex agrifood data.
Catherine also touched on FAIR Data principles for better data sharing and transparency, plus practical tools like the Semantic Sensor Network for real-time monitoring and the PROV Ontology for tracking data origins. Her session laid a solid foundation for understanding how these technologies can transform agrifood data management.
Constructing a Knowledge Graph for Food Safety: Insights from STELAR
Following this introduction, Dimitris Skoutas and Petros Skoufis from Athena Research Center, joined by George Marinos from Agroknow, shared their work on constructing a Knowledge Graph specifically for food safety incident reports as part of the STELAR Project.
Dimitris provided an overview of the STELAR Project, highlighting the challenges of achieving data readiness for AI applications. He outlined the essential steps that must be taken before implementing machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, emphasising that this foundational work is crucial for ensuring the accuracy and relevance of the data used in these applications.
The speakers discussed the significance of entity recognition for food incident and regulatory data, highlighting the challenges of working with unstructured data sources. They demonstrated how Knowledge Graphs can effectively organise and contextualise this information to enhance food safety monitoring and reporting.
Their presentation showcased STELAR’s pioneering efforts to streamline data from disparate sources, providing a unified framework that could prevent food safety issues before they escalate. By integrating diverse data types, the project aims to foster a more proactive approach to food safety management, ensuring timely interventions and increased accountability across the supply chain.
A TITAN-Focused Use Case: Semantic Networks in the Food Supply Chain
Bernadette Durand from INRAE and Chanmeet Kaur from Open Food Chain then shifted the focus to the TITAN Project. They presented a compelling case study on how semantic resources are being applied to manage data within the food supply chain.
Bernadette Durand discussed the development of an interconnected network of semantic resources that enables any actor in the food supply chain to query data from any other actor. This network addresses data fragmentation and creates opportunities for easier regulatory reporting and circular economies by improving resource sharing.
Durand explained that TITAN organises these resources into repositories, making them easy to locate and simpler to align, which ultimately facilitates the creation of a robust, interconnected network.
Chanmeet Kaur then explored TITAN’s contributions to traceability. She showcased how TITAN’s scope has expanded to include sectors like fish and olive oil, which supports enterprises and government authorities in meeting regulatory requirements.
Kaur highlighted the consumer benefits as well, explaining how Open Food Chain’s QR code feature allows consumers to verify a product’s journey, enabling direct engagement with brands and promoting transparency throughout the supply chain.
Exploring DATAPIPE: Data Pipelines for a Circular Economy
In the session’s final presentation, Theodor-Christian Chirvasuta from TNO discussed the DATAPIPE project, focusing on the concept of Decentralised Digital Product Passports (DPPs). He explained how DPPs enhance visibility, traceability, and accountability across supply chains, making them crucial tools for advancing transparency within the agrifood ecosystem.
Theodor-Christian highlighted the societal relevance of DPPs and shared insights into the project’s impact and adoption methodology, which aims to encourage widespread use of DPPs to support a sustainable, circular economy.
An Engaging and Interactive Q&A
The session concluded with a lively Q&A moderated by Julia Mitrovic, where participants from various industries engaged actively with the speakers. Questions spanned technical aspects of Knowledge Graph implementation and broader applications, exploring how tools like Knowledge Graphs and data pipelines could go beyond current uses to enhance sustainability, optimise logistics, and support circular economy efforts across multiple sectors.
Conclusion
The STELAR and TITAN Projects’ webinar provided a comprehensive overview of how semantic technologies like Knowledge Graphs can reshape agrifood data management. For those who were unable to attend, the webinar recording is available below.
Stay tuned for more advancements in agrifood data management and be sure to follow us on LinkedIn for the latest updates and insights!
