Optimized Planning for Food Banks

• Grant number: 24/05769-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: November 01, 2024
• End date: February 28, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Engineering - Production Engineering - Operational Research
• Principal Investigator: Daniela Renata Cantane
• Grantee: Rhyan Christian Rampazo
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biociências (IBB). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Botucatu. Botucatu , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 25/07611-2 - Poverty-Incorporating Meta Goal Programming for Optimizing Food Resource Distribution in Food Banks, BE.EP.MS

Abstract

Hunger affects millions of individuals across the planet. In addition to the lack of adequate public policies, economic, health and climate crises contribute to the increase in the number of people in a state of food insecurity. On the other hand, there is a significant proportion of food that is still in a state of consumption and that is sent directly to the garbage. Thus, in Brazil and around the world, numerous food collection campaigns are routinely carried out by food banks and collection centers, which aim to reduce wasted quantities and, thus, promote nutritional security for their beneficiaries in communities where they operate. However, in most cases, these institutions do not have computational tools that can assist in the process of centralization, storage and distribution of the collected food, making the process laborious and time-consuming. In this sense, this project aims to develop an extended goal programming model applied to equitable food distribution planning, considering the categorization of the food collected and controlling the stock according to the type of food to assist food bank managers in the decision-making process.