Semantic Carbon Footprint of Food Supply Chain Management

Abstract

Currently climate change poses a significant challenge to us, both now and as we head into the future. Several individuals endeavour to adopt more sustainable lifestyles, ensuring that our daily choices do not have adverse impact on our planet. Under the umbrella of sustainability, food stands out as an area of specific emphasis, specifically regarding the environmental aspects of our selected diet and the ways we can make decisions that reduce the negative impacts. It is challenging to figure out how to effectively model the environmental impact of food production in a way that is useful to food manufacturers, consumers, and other individuals concerned about sustainability. To tackle this challenge, an ontology and a knowledge graph have been developed to assess the CO2 emissions generated throughout the several stages of food manufacturing and distribution. This comprehensive approach leads as a significant indicator of environmental impact, explores potential alternatives, and provides a comparison of CO2 emissions. Our work focuses specifically on assessing the environmental consequences of food production, primarily through the measurement of CO2 emissions. We consider key factors such as animal feeding, land usage, and transportation within this scope. The data to test our approach is coming from various open-source datasets such as the Food Emissions Dataset, Nutrition Facts Dataset, etc. Several use-cases have been simulated to validate the usability and efficiency of the work.