Sveinn Margeirsson

Decision Support Systems for the Food Industry

Applications of Decision Support Systems (DSSs) in the food industry, and in particular the seafood industry, are discussed. The amount of data recorded in the food industry has increased greatly in the last decade, parallel to descending cost of data recording through automatization and computer systems. The data can be used to fulfill the demands of consumers that want information on their food products, such as origin, impact on the environment and more. By using traceability this flow of data can be used for decision support. Many fields within food processing can gain from using DSS. Such fields include for example lowering environmental impact of food processing, safety management, processing management and stock management. Research and development projects that the authors have taken part in and the following implementations of software solutions are discussed and some examples given of practical usage of DSS in the food industry as a result of such work.

Assessing the Impact of Policy Changes in the Icelandic Cod Fishery Using a Hybrid Simulation Model

Most of the Icelandic cod is caught in bottom trawlers or longliners. These two fishing methods are fundamentally different and have different economic, environmental, and even social effects. In this paper we present a hybrid-simulation framework to assess the impact of changing the ratio between cod quota allocated to vessels with longlines and vessels with bottom trawls. It makes use of conventional bioeconomic models and discrete event modelling and provides a framework for simulating life cycle assessment (LCA) for a cod fishery. The model consists of two submodels, a system dynamics model describing the biological aspect of the fishery and a discrete event model for fishing activities. The model was run multiple times for different quota allocation scenarios and results are presented where different scenarios are presented in the three dimensions of sustainability: environmental, social, and economic. The optimal allocation strategy depends on weighing the three different factors. The results were encouraging first-steps towards a useful modelling method but the study would benefit greatly from better data on fishing activities.

Future Opportunities for Bioeconomy : Focus on the West Nordic Region

This final report provides an overview of bioresources in the West Nordic region focusing on Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Greenland, their utilisation and future opportunities based on green grow ...