More Like this

1. Understanding Neighbor Food Needs and Preferences through an Interactive Dashboard

   https://doi.org/10.54941/ahfe1006420  

   Bonsu, Enoch; Jiang, Steven; Morrow, Benjamin; Davis, Lauren (July 2025, AHFE International)

   Leitner, Christine; Bassano, Clara; Satterfield, Debra (Ed.)

   Food insecurity is a social and economic condition where an individual or household have difficulty to obtain safe and nutritious food. Food insecurity in America is a serious issue given that more than 30 million people in America are food insecure. The complex nature of the problem cannot be address by federal nutrition assistance programs alone. Non-profit hunger relief organizations also play a significant role. Feeding America is the nation’s largest hunger relief organization and has over 200 affiliated food banks. Those food banks used to focus on providing emergency food assistance, more and more are paying more attention to the needs and preferences of the people they serve and provide culturally relevant food and food that meets the dietary and other health considerations. Working with a local food bank and its affiliated partner agencies, neighbor preference data were collected. An interactive dashboard was developed to allow decision-makers of the food bank to make evidence-based informed decisions in complex hunger relief operations such as food procurement and distribution. 

   more » « less
2. Advances in Human Error, Reliability, Resilience, and Performance. AHFE 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing

   https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94391-6_2  

   Delpish, R.; Jiang, S.; Davis, L; Odubela, K. (June 2018, A Visual Analytics Approach to Combat Confirmation Bias for a Local Food Bank)

   In the fight against hunger, Food Banks must routinely make strategic distribution decisions under uncertain supply (donations) and demand. One of the challenges facing the decision makers is that they tend to rely heavily on their prior experiences to make decisions, a phenomenon called cognitive bias. This preliminary study seeks to address cognitive bias through a visual analytics approach in the decision-making process. Using certain food bank data, interactive dashboards were prepared as an alternative to the customary spreadsheet format. A preliminary study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the dashboard and results indicated dashboards reduced the amount of confirmation bias. 

   more » « less
3. Development of food bank data visualizations using eye tracking

   https://doi.org/10.54941/ahfe1005087  

   Jiang, Steven; Ivuawuogu, Henry; Milad_Javadi, Amir; Hamilton, Mikaya; Davis, Lauren (January 2024, AHFE International, USA)

   Leitner, Christine; Nägele, Rainer; Bassano, Clara; Satterfield, Debra (Ed.)

   Food banks are key players in the fight against hunger. The complexity of the food bank operations data makes decision-making very challenging. Data visualization can allow food bank operations managers to quickly and easily understand the data and make evidence-based decisions. However, poorly designed visualizations could be confusing and/or misleading. This study uses eye-tracking technology to understand how users interact with various food bank data visualizations and use eye-tracking data to better design those visualizations. The findings of this study will have an impact on improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the food bank operations. 

   more » « less
4. Elicitation of Preference among Multiple Criteria in Food Distribution by Food Banks

   https://doi.org/10.1111/poms.13551  

   Hasnain, Tanzid; Sengul Orgut, Irem; Ivy, Julie Simmons (October 2021, Production and Operations Management)

   The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals provide a road map for countries to achieve peace and prosperity. In this study, we address two of these sustainable development goals: achieving food security and reducing inequalities. Food banks are nonprofit organizations that collect and distribute food donations to food‐insecure populations in their service regions. Food banks consider three criteria while distributing the donated food: equity, effectiveness, and efficiency. The equity criterion aims to distribute food in proportion to the food‐insecure households in a food bank's service area. The effectiveness criterion aims to minimize undistributed food, whereas the efficiency criterion minimizes the total cost of transportation. Models that assume predetermined weights on these criteria may produce inaccurate results as the preference of food banks over these criteria may vary over time, and as a function of supply and demand. In collaboration with our food bank partner in North Carolina, we develop a single‐period, weighted multi‐criteria optimization model that provides the decision‐maker the flexibility to capture their preferences over the three criteria of equity, effectiveness, and efficiency, and explore the resulting trade‐offs. We then introduce a novel algorithm that elicits the inherent preference of a food bank by analyzing its actions within a single‐period. The algorithm does not require direct interaction with the decision‐maker. The non‐interactive nature of this algorithm is especially significant for humanitarian organizations such as food banks which lack the resources to interact with modelers on a regular basis. We perform extensive numerical experiments to validate the efficiency of our algorithm. We illustrate results using historical data from our food bank partner and discuss managerial insights. We explore the implications of different decision‐maker preferences for the criteria on distribution policies. 

   more » « less
5. Clustering Partner Agencies for a Local Food Bank

   Ivuawuogu, H.; Jiang, S.; Davis, L. (May 2023, Proceedings of 2023 Industrial and Systems Engineering Annual Conference)

   Babski-Reeves, K.; Eksioglu, B.; Hampton, D. (Ed.)

   Food insecurity is a serious problem in America and the pandemic makes the problem even worse. Feeding America has more than 200 food banks. that These food banks and their partner agencies are the key players in the battle against food insecurity. Partner agencies may vary in size and location depending on the service area and the variety of the partner agencies and the complexities of their operations make equitable food distribution very challenging. There is a need for a meaningful to group those partner agencies to assist food bank operations managers to make informed decisions. This study uses data from a local food bank and its partner agencies. Each agency is unique in terms of its behavior. Therefore, k-means clustering was used to categorize agencies into groups based on the number of persons served and the amount of food received. The results of the study will provide evidence-based information to assist the food bank in making informed decisions. 

   more » « less