[PDF] RFID Sensor Network Automation - Ebook Free

With the continued growth in the world’s population, there is a need to ensure availability of enough food to feed everyone. Advances in science and technology have helped not only to increase food production, but also to reduce food wastage. However, the latter has the potential to be improved to a significant extent through appropriate matching of supply and demand, and with proper handling during storage and transit. Given the amount of food wastage that occurs after a food item leaves the “farm” on its way to the “fork,” and the availability of means to reduce such wastage, there really is no excuse for feigned ignorance. We believe that the disconnect between available technology and applications that could use it
is due to sheer lack of communication between experts in these domains. Food wastage can be reduced by ensuring quality and safety through tracking/tracing from farm to fork (f2f). Reliable tracking/tracing of food items facilitates improved supply/demand matching, which in turn reduces food wastage.

In addition to direct food wastage, health risks associated with food safety play a major role in food consumption. Interestingly, most recent initiatives that address food safety issues include some form of trackability/traceability as an important component. Examples include ePedigree initiatives with the explicit goal of eliminating or reducing counterfeit items and contamination in pharmaceutical items, protection of public health through containment of disease outbreaks, and identification of harmful chemicals in food items.

This book is targeted at a general readership interested in studying the application of modern information and communication technologies, with specific focus on RFID/IoT, in the food industry. Readers could include food-business practitioners, students/researchers in food science, students/researchers in management information systems or computer/electrical engineering, and students/researchers interested in (food) supply-chain management and marketing in the business domain. We have attempted to include just enough technical detail to render this book accessible and useful to both practitioners as well as researchers. We also intend this book to be accessible to non-researchers and practitioners who are interested in or are concerned with food safetyand quality issues. We are certainly grateful to have the opportunity to work in this growing and exciting area of RFID in the food industry, and we sincerely hope that the readers of this book become sufficiently familiar with the subject to
appreciate its content and be able to contribute to this general area.