Latest Event Updates
Upcomming workshop with stakeholders from the horticultural belt of La Plata
On April 26th, RUC-APS will summon multiple stakeholders from the horticultural belt of La Plata to a working session. The goal of the session will be to construct shared understanding in terms of the requirements and challenges in the desicion making processes of horticulture, with special focus in the region of La Plata and the Buenos Aires province.
This event will ocurr in coincidence with the visit to UNLP of representatives of University of Plymouth, University of Lorraine, and University of Liverpool.
RUC-APS local web-site at INIA (Chile)
The Institute of Agricultural Research (INIA) in Chile has just released a new web-site with information about RUC-APS for the spanish speaking community. In addition, the site provides insight into INIA’s activities and results in the project.
Great work!
Report on the special track: Advances and Challenges in HCI in Agriculture
The International Conference on Human Computer Interaction -Interacción 2018 – is the 19th edition of the International Conference promoted by the AIPO and it took place on September 12-14, 2018 at the Universitat de les Illes Balears in Palma (Mallorca, Spain). The conference aimed at providing a forum, both for academia and industry, to exchange ideas and discuss the latest in interactive technology with a multidisciplinary approach. In that context, RUC-APS hosted one special track: Advances and Challenges in HCI in Agriculture
The goal of this special session is to attract representatives of industry and academia that can provide insight into the challenges and advances of effectively bringing ICT to agriculture, from the perspective of HCI.
Four articles were presented:
- Designing ICT for Agriculture (ICT4A) Innovations for Smallholder. Farmers: The Case of Uganda. By Christopher G. Harris and Janet Cox Achora
- Beyond the GUI in agriculture: a bibliographic review, challenges and opportunities. By Andres Rodriguez, Alejandro Fernández and Jorge Hernández Hormazabal
- A Mixed Usability Evaluation on a Multi-Criteria Group Decision Support System in Agriculture. By Julián Grigera, Alejandra Garrido, Pascale Zaraté, Guy Camilleri and Alejandro Fernández
- Using Citizen Science Gamification in Agriculture Collaborative Knowledge Production. By Jonathan Martin, Diego Torres, Alejandro Fernandez, Santiago Pravisani and Guillaume Briend
The special track was organized by:
- Prof. Jorge Hernandez, RUC-APS project Coordinator, ULMS, University of Liverpool, UK, J.E.Hernandez@Liverpool.ac.uk
- Prof. Pascale Zarate, Université de Toulouse Capitole 1, Toulouse, France, Pascale.Zarate@ut-capitole.fr
- Prof. Janusz Kacprzyk, IIntelligent Systems Laboratory – System Research Institute, Poland, Janusz.Kacprzyk@ibspan.waw.pl
- Prof. Hervé Panetto, Research Centre for Automatic Control, University of Lorraine, CNRS, France, Herve.Panetto@univ-lorraine.fr
- Julián Grigera, LIFIA, Facultad de Informática, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina/CIC julian.grigera@lifia.info.unlp.edu.ar
- Prof. Alejandro Fernández, LIFIA, Faculty of Informátics/CIC, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina alejandro.fernandez@lifia.info.unlp.edu.ar
Grus demonstrator Video
by Gabriela Bosetti (UNLP), and Pascale Zarate (UT1C)
GRUS (Group Decision Support System, GRoUp Support) is a Web-based system supporting collective decision processes that take into account the individual preferences of different actors from a same organization. It’s about supporting a multi-criteria approach for solving a concrete problem, in which decision makers must agree on a concrete alternative of solution based in the balance among all of the individual preferences. The system has been used in diverse scenarios in various domains, but not in agriculture.
A particularity within the world of agriculture is that there are still places with a lack of technological support, that may help the farmers to evaluate and explore alternative solutions. In this regard, Wilken et al [Wil90], mention that in Central America and Mexico during the ‘90, there were traditional systems, mainly depending on local group experience-based knowledge that is transferred verbally from one generation to other. We observed that this mechanisms still perseveres in some farms of small or medium size in south america, Argentina in particular . There is still an informality in decision-making, and we would like to know if a system assisting users in the decision process is really helpful for farmers, e.g. if they found that using a system allows them to visualize more alternatives of solution, or if their confidence changes when taking decisions by explicitly entering each criterion and its related weight.
But before contrasting the use of a system against the conventional methodologies, it is essential to evaluate if the current system, designed to support general-purpose decision making, adapts well to the knowledge and specific needs of farmers. A possible way to do this is conductions a concept demonstration script session with the farmers. in this regard, Sutcliffe & Ryan [Sut98] mention that one of the techniques of the SCRAM method for requirements elicitation and validation is providing a designed artefact which users can react to. To do so, prototypes or concept demonstrators can be used. In fact, the authors present a case study where prototypes were developed but had limited functionality, so they choose to run the demonstration as a concept demonstrator script. Røkke et al. [Røk10] also present a work where a combination of prototypes and demonstrator sessions are used to elicit and validate the early acceptance of the stakeholders’ requirements, in the context of a the User Interface Development for the Oil and Gas Industry.
In our case, we have been focused throughout May 2018 in the construction of a demonstrator script to easily show farmers how the system would work to make a decision within their domain. That required us to choose a scenario in the specific domain of the farmers that will participate in the session, to learn about and choose a method (the demonstrator script), to plan the script, to get together to record the sessions of 5 participants (playing the role of farmers) and finally, to edit the recordings and create the demonstrator script (the final video). The result of such experience can be watched in the video below:
Now, the next steps will be to carefully choose the questions that will be asked after each of the steps shown in the video, in order to collect some feedback from the farmers. The experience with the real farmers is planned for October 2018.
UT1C teaches UNLP-Agro staff about GDSS
As part of his secondment to UNLP (Argentina) Amir Sakka from UT1C (France) conducted a teaching session on Group Decision Support Systems. The session was aimed at academics, researchers, and students of the Faculty of Agronomic Sciences and Forestry of the National University of La Plata. It is part of a series of activities that are central to work packages 10 and 12. The aim of these activities is to pilot UTC1 technology (the Grus system) in agriculture scenarios.
The material used in this session can be downloaded in pdf form from this link. 
A video presenting an example session of the Grus system in agriculture was used for demonstration purposes. The demonstrator video is available on-line:
This teaching session will be followed by a hands on experiment to be conducted in the following days.
Mathematical models applied to irrigation networks
In July 19, 2018 Associate Professor Vicente S. Fuertes-Miquel, from Departamento de Ingeniería Hidráulica y Medio Ambiente (DIHMA) of Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) conducted a teaching sessions about “Mathematical models applied to irrigation networks” as a part of his secondment at ALSIA (Italy).
The objective of this teaching session was to present mathematical models as powerful tools to design and optimization of irrigation networks. The Mediterranean area of Spain and southern Italy have a similar problem: dry weather and lack of water. In this context, it has a lot of interest the optimization of irrigation systems (to save water) and the optimization of pumping in irrigation systems (to save water and energy). Different metaheuristic techniques (Genetic Algorithms, Particle Swarm Optimization, Harmony Search, etc.) can be applied to design and optimization of irrigation networks. Recently, the energy recovering in irrigation systems is increasing the general interest. Water irrigation systems are required to provide adequate pressure levels in any sort of network. Quite frequently, this requirement is achieved by using pressure reducing valves (PRVs). Nevertheless, the possibility of using hydraulic machines to recover energy instead of PRVs could reduce the energy footprint of the whole system. New methodologies are proposed to help water managers quantify the potential energy recovering of an irrigation water network with adequate conditions of topographies distribution. Improving the energy efficiency of water systems by hydraulic energy recovery is becoming an inevitable trend for energy conservation, emissions reduction, and the increase of profit margins as well as for environmental requirements. Nowadays, the use of micro hydropower in irrigation systems is being analysed to improve the overall energy efficiency.
The presentation used during the teaching sessions is available for download here
RUC-APS at Euro 2018
The European Conference on Operational Research (Euro 2018) took place from July 8th to 11th in Valencia Spain. In the context of this conference, RUC-APS organized three special sessions.
- OR Advances in Agri-Food Systems
- Risk and Uncertainty in Agri-Food Systems
- Supply Chain Modelling and Optimization
In total, 12 articles were presented, some of which were submitted by researchers in the RUC-APS consortium. The detailed program is provided below.
This sessions contributed to the consolidation and expansión of the RUC-APS network, towards risk and uncertainty in agriculture and agri-food systems.
Teaching on GDSS at UPV and AINIA
In June 20th, and June 22nd, Prof. Pascale Zarate, from Université Toulouse 1 Capitole conducted two teaching sessions. These sessions were specially aimed at researchers and academics from UPV and from AINIA respectively. The topic of these sessions was Group Decision Support Systems and how these system can improve group efficiency for decision making problems.
This activity is part of the teaching agenda of Prof. Zarate’s secondment to UPV that is currently taking place.
The presentation used during the teaching sessions is available for download here
Strategic KPI models
As part of her secondment to BDI (France) María José Verdecho from UPV (Spain) conducted a teaching session on Strategic Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) Models based on Performance Measurement Systems. The session was presented to Cécile Guyon (European Project Manager) and Guillaume Briend (Agretic Program Manager) at BDI (Bretagne Development Innovation). This Teaching session is linked to Juan José Alfaro’s teaching session on Process KPIs models as both models are to be integrated into a global model for solid and coherent performance management within organisations and supply chains. The Teaching session also dealt with KPIs models extension to supply chains performance management. Also, both Teaching sessions promotes collaboration between WP8 and WP15.
The aim of the presentation is to provide an overview on strategic KPIs models so that BDI could learnt how KPIs models can be applied to BDI for including the regional government politics and customer’s results in an integrated BDI KPI`s model, mainly oriented to the Agretic Program. The Agretic program promotes the emergence of projects by bringing digital companies closer to agriculture and the agri-food industry by offering digital solutions to agriculture and agri-food companies. Initiated by the Brittany Region in 2011, the Agretic program is managed by Bretagne Développement Innovation in collaboration with the Chambers of Agriculture of Brittany and the Valorial competitiveness cluster.
The presentation used during the teaching sessions is available for download here
Process KPIs models
As part of her secondment to BDI (France) Juan José Alfaro from UPV (Spain) conducted a teaching session on Process KPIs Models on Performance Measurement Systems. The session was presented to Cécile Guyon (European Project Manager) and Guillaume Briend (Agretic Program Manager) at BDI (Bretagne Development Innovation). This Teaching session is linked to Maria Jose Verdecho’s teaching session on Strategic Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) Models as both models are to be integrated into a global model for solid and coherent performance management within organisations and supply chains. The Teaching session also dealt with KPIs models extension to supply chains performance management. Also, both Teaching sessions promotes collaboration between WP8 and WP15.
The aim of the presentation is to provide knowledge on Process KPIs Models so that BDI could learnt how KPIs models (strategic and process level) can be applied to BDI for including the regional government politics and customer’s results in an integrated BDI KPI`s model, mainly oriented to the Agretic Program. Since both levels complement each other they must be addressed in a global way. The Agretic program promotes the emergence of projects by bringing digital companies closer to agriculture and the agri-food industry by offering digital solutions to agriculture and agri-food companies. Initiated by the Brittany Region in 2011, the Agretic program is managed by Bretagne Développement Innovation in collaboration with the Chambers of Agriculture of Brittany and the Valorial competitiveness cluster.
Description of the model of Scenarios and LEL
July 2nd, 2018
As part of his secondment to the University of Lorraine, professor Leandro Antonelli from the National University of La Plata, held a teaching section on The Model of Scenarios and LEL, and its applicability to RUC-APS.
Scenarios describe interactions between users and a future system. It is also used to understand the context of the application. Leite defines a scenario with the following attributes: (i) a title that identifies the scenario; (ii) a goal or aim to be reached through the execution of the episodes; (iii) a context that sets the starting point to reach the goal; (iv) the resources, relevant physical objects or information that must be available, (v) the actors, agents that perform the actions, and (vi) the set of episodes.
The Language Extended Lexicon (LEL) is a glossary used to capture and describe the domain´s language.
Terms (also called symbols) are classified into four types: Subject, Object, Verb, and State. Subjects represent an active element that performs actions. Objects are passive elements on which subjects perform actions. A verb is used to represent the actions. Finally, States represent situations in which subjects and objects can be located.
A symbol is described by two attributes: (i) the notion and (ii) the behavioral responses. Notion describes the symbol denotation and explains its literal meaning. While Behavioral responses describe its connotation, that is, the effects and consequences of the relationship between the defined symbol and others symbols defined in the LEL.
Pascale Zarate (UT1C) honored with GDN INFORMS Section Award
The Group Decision and Negotiation (GDN) section of the International Federation of Operational Research and Management Science Society (INFORMS) awarded Pascale Zaraté, ADRIA team, on June 12th2018 at the University of d’Aeronotics et Astraunotics, Nanjing, China during the annual international conference GDN organized under the authority of the GDN-INFORMS section. Since 2004, this award is yearly assigned to one researcher for his/her whole activity and his/her involvement in the GDN community. Since 2004, only three women have been awarded: Prof. Katia Sycara, Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science, USA; Prof. Fran Ackerman, Curtin University, Australia and Prof. Pascale Zaraté, Université Toulouse 1 Capitole – IRIT, France.
Learning about some aspects of plant breeding: Artichoke
On June 18th, in the context of her secondment to CNRISPA (Italy), Constanza Jana (INIA, Chile) conducted a teaching session on the various aspects of plant breeding, with particular focus on Artichoke. Plant breading requires in-depth knowledge of the target plant, and a clear definition of improvement goals. Plant breeding techniques are key in nowadays plant species domestication. In the present, only 30 of the 700 domesticated plant species are in use.
The session was targeted at students of the Liceo Scientifico “S. Simone” – Liceo Classico “D. Morea” – Conversano (BA).
Sustainable vegetables production systems for the South of Chile in Climate Change context
On June 12th, Sigrid Vargas Schuldes from INIA Chile , held a teaching session at CNR-ISPA, aimed at CNR-ISPA researchers.
The topic of the session was climate change as an opportunity for sustainable horticultural production in the regions of Los Ríos y Los Lagos (South of Chile). Climate changes enables productive diversification, and new business opportunities specially for small farmers. It therefore calls for new research and development models with a focus on global and local adaptation.
The session presentation can be downloaded here
Summary of 10 years of research on artichoke in the semi-arid zone of Chile
On June 12th Constanza Jana Ayala from INIA (Chile) conducted a teaching session in the context of her secondment to CNR-ISPA (Italy). The session started with an overview of the activities of INIA, with special focus in the work conducted at the Intihuasi Research Regional Center . After a brief introduction of all participants, the session moved on to discuss artichoke production in Chile and Italy. Topics of the session included evolution of production in the region, production methods, breeding methods and main crop health challenges and approaches.
Presentations used during the session can be downloaded from the following links
Strategies to recover and work on Chilean local tomatoes
On June 5th, 2018, during the secondment to FEDACOVA (Spain), Dr. Juan Pablo MARTINEZ form INIA-La Cruz, Chile, conducted a RUC-APS teaching session for the dissemination activities of the H2020 RUC-APS project. He travelled to Valencia, Spain. The meeting discussed the role of the Agricultural Research Institute (INIA) in Chile. INIA generates and transfers knowledge and strategic technologies on a national scale, and also as provides with innovation methods to improves competitiveness in the agri-food sector. This session presented the methodologies that INIA applies to recover the local tomatoes with good organoleptic characteristics (colour, taste, and aroma). It also showed the variety of strategies to study the effect of the biocontrol on productivity and quality, to investigate the effect of rootstock on productivity and fruit quality and to use new local rootstock from local tomato varieties and wild tomato species. In addition to this, FEDACOVA’s audience was able to provide feedback regarding their experience in innovation for several domains such as productivity and fruit quality at harvest and postharvest.
RUC-APS thanks Sergio Barona, and Juanjo Rico for their hospitality and insightful feedback during Juan Pablo’s secondments and for supporting this RUC-APS teaching session.
Use of conceptual models to visualize the value chain
On May 16, Jorge Hernandez led a teaching session on the use of conceptual models to visualize the value chain, specially targeted at researchers of INIA (Chile). This topic interesting for those who seek to develop projects at the level of the value chain and, therefore, use a standard methodology for the characterization of these. In this case, the SCOR methodology is used to conceptualize indicators and GRAI to visualize the flow of information and decisions.
Presentation is available for download here
RUC-APS visits the KOM lab in Darmstadt
During his secondment to IBSPAN (Poland), and as part of the dissemination activities of the RUC-APS project, Dr. Alejandro Fernández (from UNLP) travelled to Darmstadt, Germany. He visited the University of Darmstadt, and spent a few days of meetings and enriching discussion at KOM (the Multimedia Communications Lab).
On Thursday April 26 2018, Alejandro gave a formal presentation about the project to members of the KOM research lab. The director of KOM, Dr. Ralf Steinmetz, and the director of the research area for “Educational Media and Applications”, Dr. Christoph Rensing, attended the presentation, as well as various Ph.D students and researchers.
During the presentation, Alejandro provided an overview of the project (goals, consortium, and activities) and more details of the work-package 10, lead by UNLP. He specially asked the audience to provide feedback regarding their experience in innovation for domains such as agriculture, and product design. This resulted in a series of very interesting talks and meeting for the next day.
To conclude the presentation, Alejandro suggested attendees to consider Risk and Uncertainty in Agriculture as a potential domain for their innovations. We hope that future projects can count with the contribution of KOM.
RUC-APS thanks TUD, and KOM for their hospitality and insightful feedback during Alejandro’s visit.
Mathematical Models in Agri-food Supply Chains
In April 10,11 and 20th 2018 Associate Prof. Mareva Alemany Díaz, from Centro de Investigación en Gestión e Ingeniería de Producción (CIGIP) of Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) conducted several teaching sessions about “Mathematical Models in Agri-food Supply Chains” as a part of her secondment at ALSIA (Italy).
The objective of these teaching sessions was to present mathematical models as powerful tools to be used by farmers during their decision-making process at different decisional levels. These decision levels include the strategic level (facility location, network design, technology selection), tactical level (crop selection, harvest planning, labor planing) and operational level (storage, distribution, order management). First, the general structure of mathematical models was described and then, three applications of Mathematical Models to agricultural supply chains were presented to: 1) define the schedule of the grape harvest operations, 2) promise customer order proposals in a fruit supply chain and 3) forecast demand or prices by a software tool based on mathematical models. As a conclusion it can be stated that mathematical models can be applied to wide range of problems in the sector. This is supported by the fact that during last years it is observed an increasing development of mathematical models in agrifood supply chains with special emphasis put on the uncertainty modelling.
The presentation used during the teaching sessions is available for download here
PRODUCTION PLANNING & CONTROL JOURNAL SPECIAL ISSUE “Operations management and collaboration in Agri-Food Supply Chains”
Deadline: 1 November 2018
Agri-Food supply chains can be seen as a complex network of large, medium and small producers (who grow and trade food commodities), processors (who process, manufacture and market primary and value added products), distributors (such as wholesalers and retailers that market and sell the food), consumers (who shop, purchase and consume food) and government/non-government organisations (who establish regulations that control the agri-food supply chain).
However, growing world population, dynamic market demands, high product variety, low understanding of regulations across countries as well as the need for maintaining high standards in food growing and production are sources of uncertainty which imply a management challenge for reducing cost and waste as well as for balancing food supply and demand. Thus, collaboration among stakeholders along the agri-food supply chain is more important than ever, and the right application of operations management concepts will help to oversee the key information flows across the entire agri-food supply chain, which will guarantee an efficient decision-making process for food growing and production with a view to meeting end-customers’ specifications and satisfaction.
From this, development and re-design of agri-food supply chains will emerge, by linking relevant inputs, outputs and processes to key agri-food supply chain aspects such as continuous improvement, cost reduction and minimized imbalance between supply and demand. This will lead to the creation of a more productive and sustainable agri-food supply chain system, able to mitigate risks and uncertainties. Therefore, the study and contribution on operations management and collaboration in Agri-Food Supply Chain Systems is presented as a multi-disciplinary theme of contemporary interest and useful for both the industry as well as the academic research area, with applications in several sectors, such as: agronomy, food manufacturing, transport and logistics, strategic planning, health, legislation, marketing, economy, supply chain management, knowledge management, risk and uncertainty, innovation and ICT-based decision support systems.
Topic selection
The objective of this special issue is to identify the operations management situations where decisions are made difficult by uncertainty in the agri-food domain, within the study and implementation of Operations Management based approaches in agri-food supply chains. Contributions to this special issue are expected to provide answers to managerial research questions such as (but not limited to):
- How are the variety of stakeholders in the agri-food supply chain affected by regulations, prices, business management and food-safety related issues?
- How can growers and producers collaborate to reduce costs and prices in the agri-food supply chain, whilst providing safe, nutritious, accessible and affordable food to consumers?
- In conditions of information uncertainty, how do management decisions affect food quality and waste? How can information systems mitigate the problem?
- How can operations management contribute to customer satisfaction in agri-food supply chains?
- What benefits can agri-food operations management deliver for sustainable food transport and logistic whilst reducing food waste?
Contributions are expected on research that stems from an industrial need and can guide the activities of managers and future researchers. Theoretical contributions without management implications, will normally not be considered.
Submission instructions
This is an open call for full papers. High-quality papers from EURO2018 and PRO-VE 2018 will be selected by the Scientific Committee to be extended and submitted to this call, for review.
All contributions will be subjected to a single-blind review process. Manuscripts must be sent electronically to the guest editors and should be prepared according to the Production Planning & Control guidelines that can be found at http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/journal.asp?issn=0953-7287&linktype=44
Important Dates
- Manuscript submission deadline, 1st November 2018
- The estimated publication, Autumn 2019
Editorial information
- Guest Editor: Jorge E Hernandez, Senior Lecturer in Operations & Supply Chain Management, Management School, The University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom.(J.E.Hernandez@liverpool.ac.uk)
- Guest Editor: Herve Panetto, Professor of Enterprise Information Systems, Research Centre for Automatic Control, University of Lorraine, CNRS, France (Herve.Panetto@univ-lorraine.fr)
- Guest Editor: Martin Mortimer, Professor of Agricultura Ecology, Integrative Biology Institute, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK, martmort@liverpool.ac.uk
- Guest Editor: Nicola Calabrese, Food Production Innovation, CNR – Institute of Sciences of Food Production; Bari, Italy (nicola.calabrese@ispa.cnr.it)
- Guest Editor: David Martinez, ICT Manager, Food safety systems and Value chain integration, AINIA Technological Centre, Valencia, Spain (dmsimarro@ainia.es)
Premio Regionale Olivarium (Olivarium Regional Prize)
Today, April 24th 2018, a very interesting congress on olive oil from Basilicata organized by ALSIA. Best oils will get a prize. Very interesting the relation between consumption of extra vergin olive oil and health.
57 olive oils from the Bassilicata region participate in this event. They will compete for the prize of “best single-variety”, “best in biological production”, “best label”, “best among large producers”, and best among “emerging oils”.
UoP and UNLP visiting Serviverde , in La Plata (AR)
On 19 March 2018, the RUC-APS team from University of Plymouth (Carmen Lopez, Guoqing Zhao & Huilan Chen) and from National University of La Plata (Susana Gamboa & Mariana del Pino) visited Serviverde, in La Plata, Argentina. Serviverde is a large producer of vegetables in the area of La Plata. The staff of Serviverde showed us a number of tomato, eggplant and broccoli greenhouses, and then the water system they used. After that, UoP team shared their experience based on their secondments in different countries: A detailed explanation of how to build relationships with agricultural research institutions and how to establish cooperative relationships with different farmers in some European countries. The CEO of Serviverde, Damián Simonetti, also shared their experience on how they exchange knowledge with different farmers and how they build collaborative relationships in the area of La Plata. Furthermore, a number of risks and uncertainties in the agricultural sector were also discussed during the meeting.
Special Track at Interacción 2018
Palma, September 12-14, 2018
RUC-APS organizes a special track on “Advances and Challenges in HCI in Agriculture” at Interacción 2018, in Palma, Spain.
The goal of this special session is to attract representatives of industry and academia that can provide insight into the challenges and advances of effectively bringing ICT to agriculture, from the perspective of HCI. The session is organized by members of the H2020 RUC-APS project (www.ruc-aps.eu), whose goal is to enhance and implement knowledge based ICT solutions within high risk and uncertain conditions for agriculture production systems.
Paper submission is now open (till April 15th) .
Download de CFP or Visit the web Site
Special Session at PRO-VE’18
Cardiff, UK, 17-19 September 2018.
RUC-APS organizes a special session on “Cognitive Systems in Food and Agribusiness Value Chains” at PRO-VE’18.
This session is focused on papers addressing research and applications in the food value chain and in agribusiness. The objective is to present interesting research and practical developments to address the challenges in the sector and to present innovative approaches and new business models for the new scenarios on the coming years.
This session also addresses several aspects covered by H2020 RUC-APS project (www.ruc-aps.eu) a H2020 Rise project devoted to “Enhancing and implementing Knowledge based ICT solutions within high Risk and Uncertain Conditions for Agriculture Production Systems”.
Abstract submission is now open (till March 11th) .
Download the CFP.
Operational Research Advances in Agribusiness
Valencia, July 8-11, 2018
RUC-APS organizes a special stream on “Operational Research Advances in Agribusines” at this year’s Euro 2018 .
This special stream will have the objective of exploring and gathering the state-of-the-art on conceptual and applied interoperable solutions to support Agriculture decision-making once facing uncertainty and risk. This will include the use of OR with application to ICT, simulations, data analysis, precision farming and innovation approaches in agriculture that will help agriculture stakeholders improving their performance and supporting multidisciplinary and collaborative solutions in Agriculture production systems consider the current socio-economic trends and challenges in Agriculture.
Abstract submissions is now open (till March 5th).
Download de CFP
RUC-APS in the January issue of AlSIA’s Agrifoglio
Agrifolgio is the monthly newsletter of ALSIA (Lucan Agency of Innovation and Development in Agriculture). Each month, Agriflogio publishes a new issue covering regional news regarding sustainable agriculture. We are proud to announce that the January 2018 issue of Agrifoglio includes an article featuring RUC-APS. We encourage you to read the complete issue (in Italian) from the newsletter’s home page .
Mathematical Programming basics
In January 29th, 2018 Associate Prof. David Perez, from Centro de Investigación en Gestión e Ingeniería de Producción (CIGIP) from Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) conducted one teaching session as part of his teaching agenda in the secondment that took place in Bretagne Développement Innovation (BDI).
This session was specially aimed at staff from BDI. The topic was “Introduction to Mathematical Programming”. It was shown the advantages of using some of the technics of Operations Research, an more particularly, Mathematical Programming, in Suppy Chain Management. Then one basic example was approached. The final goal was to get started in the field of Mathematical programming and get new insights to cope with the specific characteristics of agri-food Supply Chains and how decisions are taken.
Regarding SCM, two basic types of decisions were pointed out:
- SC Design: They are related to long Term Decisions (strategical), for example the location and sizing of the different nodes, connection possibilities among the nodes and sizing of them…
- SC Operations Planning; They are related to Medium/Short Term Decisions (tactical and operational), for example the planning of physical activities (Production, Storage and Transport) and non-physical activities (Purchase and Sales), distinguishing between those taken tactically and thefore capacity-based decisions and those taken operationally, more focused on their execution.
Centralized and Decentralized-based decisions among the different partners of a SC as well as different degrees collaboration schemes were also briefly approached.
Regarding, Operations Research tools, some of them were identified such as: inventory management theory, graphs theory, simulation, and finally mathematical programming. This latest one was chosen as the most appropiate one to cope with SC decision-making and to characterize the different decisions along Agrifood SC: planting, harvesting, processing, distributing…
The presentation used during the teaching sessions is available for download here
RUC-APS Special Sessions at PRO-VE 2017
The PRO-VE conference took place from September 10th to 20th, in Vicenza, Italy. This edition of PRO-VE (the 18th) was dedicated to the topic of “collaboration in a data-rich world”. In that context, RUC-APS hosted two special sessions.
Special Session: “Risk and Uncertainty in Agriculture” organized by Jorge Hernandez (United Kingdom), Janusz Kacprzyk (Poland), Hervé Panetto (France), Alejandro Fernandez (Argentina), Marco De Angelis (United Kingdom)
The goal of this special session was to explore and gather the state-of-the-art on conceptual and applied interoperable solutions to support Agriculture decision-making once facing uncertainty and risk.
Three articles were presented:
Special Session: “Collaboration in Food and Agribusiness”, organized by Mareva Alemany (Spain), Angel Ortiz (Spain)
This special session addressed research and applications in the food value chain and in agribusiness. The objective was to present interesting research and practical developments to address the challenges in the sector and also to present innovative approaches and new business models for the new scenarios on the coming years.
Three articles were presented:
During and after the sessions, members of the RUC-APS team had the chance to exchange knowledge with attendees, disseminating the activities of the project and learning from related research.
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