Circular Health for Industry

The aim of this call was to support innovative research projects, focused at advancing scientific knowledge in the field of artificial intelligence and with an impact on economic and social aspects.

The objectives of the Circular Health for Industry project are many, but the role of new technologies and technology transfer to industries is central. The project is based on the concept of <strong>Circular Health</strong>.

Circular Health, a concept promoted by Ilaria Capua, Director of the One Health Center of Excellence at the University of Florida, represents an evolution of the concept of global health. It considers the promotion of health with a vision that includes the environment, plants, animals and man, through the synergy and collaboration of various actors of the society, who integrate their skills. These actors include, for example, industries, policy makers and researchers. The monitoring and maintenance of plant health, on which the safety of food and feed products and the control of zoonoses depend, are among the most important fields of application.

A specific part of the project, coordinated by the Centre Agroinnova of the University of Torino, is related to food production and processing, and <strong>the industry Fudex plays a key role in it</strong>.

The main goal is to implement an end-to-end traceability system of the entire production chain, from the cultivation of raw materials to the final product. This system will be implemented by means of a blockchain infrastructure and will serve both to increase the awareness of the final consumer and to speed up the identification of the goods to be collected in the event of a health risk. In addition, it is proposed to implement artificial intelligence algorithms applied to the image processing of processed food products, in order to increase production efficiency and food safety.

A second case study is on Vanzetti Holstein farm.

Vanzetti Holstein is located in Candiolo, and deals with cattle breeding and the cultivation of fodder, corn, wheat and triticale for livestock and biomass production. As part of the collaboration with Vanzetti Holstein, the project will implement artificial intelligence models to monitor the risk of disease, thanks to the processing of data collected by meteorological stations, drones with multispectral cameras, satellite images and field analysis. In addition, there will be a comparison of different irrigation systems (pivot, agripop and flushing). Furthermore, with the support of the Department of Veterinary Sciences of the University of Turin, statistical and machine learning methods will be applied for the analysis of data and the identification of any social and/or environmental factors that may affect the health, production and welfare of dairy cows. The final goal is therefore to provide information to the company for the implementation of improvements aimed at increasing productivity and optimizing the management of dairy cows. In this regard, in addition to the data from the milking robots, environmental data related to the microclimate of the stable will be collected through the use of a control unit for the detection of the THI (Temperature Humidity Index) and social interactions will be studied through the installation of a system of cameras to monitor animals in continuous time, with the help of artificial intelligence algorithms.