NutriSafe
In a cooperation between Germany and Austria, universities, companies and public authorities are conducting research to make food production and food logistics more resilient by using Distributed Ledger Technology.
In NutriSafe, technologies, data models, service architectures, business processes and business models are developed on the basis of Blockchain technology, supplemented by legal and security considerations and made available as modular toolkit under an Open Source license. Further topics are resilience of the supply situation in a metropolitan region, identity management, serious games and resilience analyses of supply chains in food production and food logistics.
Funding
On the Austrian side, the project is funded by the Federal Ministry for Agriculture, Regions and Tourism (BMLRT) within the security research funding programme KIRAS. On the German side, the project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) within the programme Research for Civil Security.
Motivation
The internationalization and digitization of products and trade leads to highly complex and networked structures. Austria and Germany have therefore decided to join forces and conduct joint research at bilateral level. The aim is to provide the best possible protection for security-relevant supply chains against errors, conventional or disaster-related interruptions and cyber attacks. Food safety and supply chain traceability are not only important in the event of a crisis, with information systems playing a central role.
Consumers want to receive as much information as possible about products and their sustainability, and companies want to pass on corresponding quality information along the supply chain. New technologies such as Distributed Ledger Technologies can help to make the flow of information in food production and logistics as secure as possible.
Objective
The NutriSafe project aims to use Distributed Ledger Technology in food supply chains to increase the resilience of these chains.
The research in NutriSafe is intended to enable actors who have not yet been involved in digital processes to be easily and securely connected to digital processes in the food supply chain. Furthermore, this should enable completely new business models. The information flows in value chains are to become more secure and thus food production and food logistics become more reliable.
The aim of NutriSafe is therefore to fundamentally investigate the resilience of the food supply and the reaction of the supply chain on disruptions in Germany and Austria. Based on these investigations, a toolkit of technologies, data models and business processes will be developed, service architectures and business models with Distributed Ledger Technology as well as recommendations for action are provided and thus the resilience of supply chains is increased. This NutriSafe toolkit is primarily intended for SMEs, as they are particularly interested in simplicity of technology and cost efficiency. Therefore, the NutriSafe toolkit is designed for SMEs and developed based on open source technology.
Community
The project’s researchers are in exchange with partners from the food and logistics industry, as well as other researchers and experts. These support for example through
- Exchange of knowledge on technologies, requirements or relevant industries
- Validation of the developed models and technologies
Furthermore, the technology developed in the project is to be handed over to the public as an open source project after the project is completed, for which a community is to be built up to facilitate the project.
If you would like to support the NutriSafe Project or be added to the Community contact list to keep up-to-date on current developments in the project, please contact manfred.hofmeier@unibw.de.
NutriSafe Toolkit
The NutriSafe toolkit will incorporate the results of NutriSafe research and make them available to the public. This includes the DLT technologies researched in the project, the interfaces or adapters to operational information systems. The legal issues concerning smart contracts, IT security, data protection and responsibilities as well as norms and standards are also included in the toolkit. Methods for risk analysis, security and above all the resilience of supply chains complement the modular kit.
Publications
For a list of published reports and research papers, see the Publications page.
Partners
In NutriSafe, universities, companies and public authorities from Germany and Austria are involved in the research activities. For more information on the involved partners, see the Partners page.