Designing a world-class infrastructure to facilitate research (RICHFIELDS)

Last Updated : 01 October 2015

Table of contents

Making “the healthy choice the easy choice” requires knowledge about our dietary habits. This knowledge comes from analysing different types of information such as: What food and drinks are we buying, preparing and eating? Where? Why? How? With whom? In what social and physical context?

New ICT technologies bring opportunities for researchers to monitor and collect information on these behaviours. Every day, consumers and businesses generate “big data” - large volumes of information, that offer detailed descriptions of behaviours, including time and place (e.g. using GPS). If these data-rich sources could be linked and analysed, they have the potential to contribute greatly towards answering key questions to respond to societal challenges regarding food and health (e.g., obesity, cardiovascular disease, sustainability).

RICHFIELDS aims to design a consumer-data platform, to collect and connect, compare and share information about our food behaviours, to revolutionise research on every-day choices made across Europe. RICHFIELDS seeks to determine what facilities, resources, and services can support research to learn more about what we choose to eat, and how and why we make those choices.

RICHFIELDS is a 3-year project that began Oct 2015, and has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 654280.