Knowledge Engineering for Decision Support in the Food and Bioproduct Industry

This book presents workflows – combinations of digital processing steps based on knowledge engineering – to address complex problems in the agrifood and bioproduct industries. These workflows enable the collection, organization, sharing, linking, and updating of various sources: expert opinions, experimental data, and stakeholder preferences. The main methodological challenge is the extraction, representation, and integration of imperfect data for reusing in tasks such as learning, prediction, and decision support. Knowledge engineering, a branch of AI, provides the methods and tools needed for expertise formalization, automated reasoning, and supported decision-making. The book builds on the work of the INRAE ICO team at the IATE research unit (Montpellier, France) and the INRAE CATI DIISCICO network, which were awarded the Open Science Research Data Award 2023 by the French Ministry of Research. This research results from a long-term collaboration with experts from the INRAE TRANSFORM division and their partners. The workflows are implemented in innovative tools for capitalizing and processing data/knowledge; applied to specific agrifood sector issues; and intended to support collective decision-making. They are illustrated with concrete cases, such as the design of biodegradable packaging composites, the selection of food product packaging, and technological recommendations for cheese quality. The book details the methodologies and tools based on the generic nature of the approaches to ensure their durability, independent of technology, while also providing open resources (software, datasets, ontologies, thesauri) so they can be reused or adapted to other contexts.