Local Communities/UKTeam/Food Open Data Challenge UK 2014

"Nesta and the Open Data Institute are running an open data challenge on the theme of Food. The specific Challenge Question is - How can we use open data to help people eat more healthily, eat more sustainably and/or have a more secure food chain? The aim is to encourage teams use available open data to develop products and services to support people to make better choices with their food. - See more at: http://www.nesta.org.uk/project/the-open-data-challenge-series/food-open-data-challenge"

Also see the hackpad: https://hackpad.com/Food-Open-Data-Challenge-tmjk5vz9Y7f#:h=The-Challenge

Dates

• 21 August: Launch and Applications Open
• 27 October: Challenge Applications Close
• 6 November: Food Challenge Participant Meetup
• 15 and 16 November: Food Creation Weekend

Open Food Facts as a source of data for Food Open Data Challenge

Open Food Facts is listed as one of the 48 open data sets related to food that may be useful for participants to the food open data challenge: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Gn10YQ1LKXXpAfBLdUjpbKvF-oKNMbN8Km3S94pU0Ak/edit

The Food Open Data Challenge is a very good opportunity to grow the number of UK food products in the Open Food Facts database so that it can be used in UK-centric applications.

Achieving critical mass

As of 9/9/2014, we have 438 products marked as sold in the UK in the Open Food Facts database: http://uk.openfoodfacts.org

In order to create interesting applications, we need to open the data for more products, so that we have a representative set of products.

Some ideas:

• Add all very popular products, 10% of the products represent 90% of what most people buy.
• Add as many products as possible in one specific category, so that we can show the potential of having open data
  • What's in my yogurt project: http://whatsinmyyogurt.com/
• Add products needed by a specific application of the data (e.g. a challenge participants that focuses on vegan products, or fair trade products, gluten-free products...)

Adding UK-centric data and features

We can add more intelligence that can turn the raw data from food labels in much more interesting data.

• mapping of UK packaging codes to cities
  • see the Project:Food_establishments
• support for UK specific food labels
• better taxonomy for food products categories
• food additives detection

See UK Team for a more comprehensive list of projets to improve http://uk.openfoodfacts.org

Reaching out

We can monitor the projects proposed for the challenge and brainstorm to see if the Open Food Facts data could help them. We can reach out to participants, understand their needs, come up with ideas and solutions and support them so that they can make the most of the Open Food Facts data.

UK-centric applications of the Open Food Facts data

What can we do and what can others do with the Open Food Facts data? How can it help people living in the UK to eat better food?

Made near you

UK version of the "C'est emballé près de chez vous" web site: http://cestemballepresdechezvous.fr

How much sugar in...

UK version of "Combien de sucres ?" educational game: http://combiendesucres.fr

Add your ideas

Any idea welcome.

Tasks

• Started 9/9/14: initiate Food Open Data Challenge project
• Started 9/9/14: recruit project team
• Started 9/9/14: Define what we could do for the Food Open Data Challenge
• Publish blog post on http://en.blog.openfoodfacts.org
• ...

Ressources

• Open Food Facts project on CollabFinder, the platform used for the ODI challenges: http://collabfinder.com/project/929/open-food-facts
• All proposed Food Open Data Challenge projects on CollabFinder: http://collabfinder.com/groups/housing-open-data-challenge-29
• Facebook Group for Open Food Facts contributors in English: https://www.facebook.com/groups/374350705955208/
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/OpenFoodFacts
• Wiki page for the UK Team