Food Safety Alerts - A Case Study on an Advanced Rapid Alert System Whisker T.Y. Law1 and Dickson K.W. Chiu1,2, Haiyang Hu3, Yi Zhuang4, Hua Hu3

1Department of Computer Science, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon, Hong Kong2Dickson Computer Systems, 7 Victory Avenue, Homantin, Hong Kong, Senior Member, IEEE

3Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou, China4College of Computer Science & Information Engineering, Zhejiang Gongshang University, China

email: whiskermail@gmail.com, dicksonchiu@ieee.org, zhuang@zjgsu.edu.cn, {huhaiyang, huhua}@hdu.edu.cn

Abstract—Globalization of food production has increased the possibility of public health incidents, involving food contaminated with pathogens or chemicals. In recent years, food poisoning and improper handling of food has caused food safety incidents of international concern. Therefore, rapid access and exchange of food safety alerts is crucial for maintaining food trade and consumer confidence in the food supply. In this paper, we introduce an Advanced Rapid Alert System (ARAS) to effectively deliver food safety alerts in a timely manner with structured information to identify affected trades related to problematic food lots and prevent them from selling as soon as possible. The ARAS requires information integration from various government departments and public services through Web services and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), such as maintaining the databases of food lot, laboratory test results and food trades’ information. The ARAS also interacts with the call center through alert mechanisms to integrate incident reporting processes. Moreover, smart phones act as ARAS clients to receive alerts anytime anywhere. Our case study demonstrates the effectiveness of information management through the use of Web services, alerts, and mobile devices in our ARAS framework.

Keywords- food safety monitoring, alert management system, web services, mobile agents, SOA, iPhone

I. INTRODUCTION Problems of unsafe food keep increasing dramatically,

causing terrible diseases to human, ranging from diarrhea to various forms of cancer. Globalization of food production is one of the reasons for unsafe food distribution, as well as the improper handling of food by different food trades. Internationally, the World Health Organization (WHO) has developed the International Food Safety Authorities Network (INFOSAN) to promote food safety information exchange among different countries and to improve collaboration among different international food safety authorities and the integration of their systems, such as the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) (Europa, 2011). In order to interface with those sophisticated systems out there, an efficient and structured food safety alert system shall also be geared in Hong Kong in order to be brought in line with international standards.

In Hong Kong, the Center for Food Safety (CFS) is a leading food authority that commands the confidence of all stakeholders in protecting the health of the people. CFS has established the Food Surveillance Program to control and prevent food hazards. Health inspectors of the Center take samples at different point of food safety control, such as the

border control points, wholesalers and retail levels. With the support of the Food Research Laboratory, microbiological and chemical testing can be performed to the sample taken. In case of any food safety problem found, CFS would promulgate surveillance results for public information. It is a three-tier approach to food surveillance consisting of routine food surveillance, targeted food surveillance and seasonal food surveillance. CFS started to pilot a Rapid Alert System (RAS) in September 2007. RAS is able to send alert messages by SMS, or a mass e-mail and fax system in order to stop selling/recall concerned food products. CFS would also issue press releases on their web site as well (CFS, 2011). However, fax, email, SMS may result in mis-interpretation without structured information, the press releases on web site are some belated information that is not efficient, and there is no response mechanism to enforce the concerned trades to take actions in timely manner. With this uncontrollable mechanism, concerned trade couldn’t take prompt action on food recalls, citizens of Hong Kong are under the risk that unsafe food would continue to affect their health in that prolonged period.

To solve the problems, this paper introduces an Advanced Rapid Alert System (ARAS) on top of the existing RAS. ARAS is designed based on an Alert Management System (AMS) (Kafeza et al. 2004) implemented upon standard web service technologies. ARAS can perform notification alerts, recall orders to trades, and trades information retrieval with the focus on timeliness of alert delivery. Moreover, mobile technologies will also be used to increase the mobility of the system, letting users to get the appropriate information anywhere. This system is designed for Hong Kong to be integrated to the existing Food Surveillance Program. After this implementation, it will also make Hong Kong ready to interface with other food safety authorities with structured food safety information. ARAS can be integrated with current manual processes for inspection and reporting and facilitates communication across health organizations (e.g. Department of Health (DH) , Hospital Authority (HA), Center for Health Protection (CHP), laboratories), Trades (e.g. retail, wholesaler) and personnel (e.g. health inspectors, citizens). ARAS will also be able to automatically classify incident severity, identify targeted alert group and define structured service level requirement.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 discusses the background and related work. Section 3 presents the system requirements and methodology. Section

4 presents our ARAS design and implementation with architecture. Section 5 illustrates how the system works with related walkthrough and prototypes. Section 6 presents the applicability discussion and advantages of ARAS, and Section 7 summarizes the paper with our future work directions.

II. BACKGROUND AND RELATED WORK

In our current environment, food regulations, Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP), Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP), or Good Hygiene Practice, are targeted to guarantee a certain level of quality. Letia et al. (2010) introduced the hazard ontology for supporting HACCP in the food supply chain. Congguo et al. (2010) developed a tracking and traceability system on pork quality by applying RFID technology. However, since most of the foods selling in Hong Kong are imported, applying HACCP with food supply chain support does not give a big advantage to the food safety in Hong Kong. On the other hand, systematic and efficient food inspection processes is crucial for imported food, and better equipped with proper food safety alert system.

To make the existing RAS work, members of the trade who wish to receive the rapid alert message should enroll to the RAS by filling in an application form and send to CFS in advance. Required information includes the demographic of the trade such as name of contact person, telephone number, email address and fax number. Moreover, the applicant needs to select the trade type from a predefined list.

Whenever there is a food safety problem, such as the case of plasticizer in Taiwan, health inspectors at the border control point would take samples from all related food lot and send them to the Food Research Laboratory. If the food lot is confirmed with problem, the laboratory would contact CFS by phone or email. CFS will then search for the trade type that is related to that particular food lot, and then send the alert to them by SMS, fax or email. There are several problems in this workflow. Firstly, the laboratory ordering is slow without a computerized process; the food lot examination is delayed. Secondly, CFS send the alert solely based on the trade type which required the accuracy of those information, that means it depends on the enrolment forms submitted by trades. If the trade selected a wrong trade type, and the staff responsible for checking the form overlooked it, the concerned trade would never get the alert. Thirdly, the alert is sent through fax or email may experience the transmission problem or mis-interpretation problem. It would result serious consequences to citizens’ health that the alert is not properly received by the concerned trade on time. Lastly, the alert is one way and does not involve an acknowledgement from concerned trades so

that the recall of the problematic food lot cannot be enforced.

There is no such thing called “successful recall”. Any food recall means there is something bad happening to a food lot that has the potential to harm our citizens’ health. Therefore, we shall establish an alert system to get food safety alerts as soon as possible to mitigate the risk of food incident or food poisoning outbreak. To achieve this goal, ARAS is required to streamline cross-organizational services or processes by creating an open and distributed system environment. By using web services technology, flexible service selection and composition for cross-organizational processes can be enabled. With the advance web services standards like the Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) (Newcomer et al, 2004), different computer systems can easily locate the required services. As such, interoperable alert exchange systems can be built. Additionally, Alert Management System (AMS) will also be adopted when designing ARAS, the disaster management system is one example that using this (Chiu et al, 2009). If the computer systems among laboratories, CFS, border control points can be integrated, efficient transmission of food inspection information can be achieved. Moreover, with the state-of-the-art mobile devices (e.g. iPhone), web services can be called anywhere and anytime by using the SOA based middleware (Eichhorn et al, 2010). When designing the ARAS, Unified Modeling Language (UML) approach is used to model web services (Lunn, 2002).

With the recent advance of mobile phone technology, we started to combine the functionalities of a mobile phone and the Portable Digital Assistant (PDA) into one single device, that’s what we called smart phone. “Apps” is a jargon on the Internet nowadays to represent the idea of mobile application used in smart phones. Operating systems and applications keep popping out everyday (iPhone, Android phone etc.). Eichhorn et al (2010) introduced a SOA-based middleware concept to be integrated with those smart phones in order to connect the mobile applications with the web services and SOA architecture at backend. The Device Profile for Web Services (DPWS) and Human Machine Interface (HMI) enabled the smart phones to call the web services available at any place. According to Wikipedia, “The DPWS defines a minimal set of implementation constraints to enable secure web service messaging, discovery, description, and eventing on resource-constrained devices”.

Considering that ARAS shall deliver timely alerts, the reliability of the system is highly concerned. On system level, we may consider redundant power supply, duplicate sets of hardware and software and information caching. On network level, since ARAS will be connected through Internet and mobile network, the network performance may not be satisfactory in most cases, so static network routing is considered not applicable. We may consider the routing configuration with “alternative path routing” (Pearlman et al., 2000) that maintain a set of diverse path to ARAS. Mobile devices can dynamically select the routing path that has the best response. Moreover, the network accelerator and load balancers can be deployed on server side to increase the reliability of the system. They will be discussed in this paper.

III. REQUIREMENTS & METHODOLOGY OVERVIE

The objectives of ARAS are to provide timely notifications and request for recall. It can be done through the Internet with the support of the mobile devices. The main stakeholders are as follows:

International Food Safety Authorities – These food safety authorities are responsible for different area. In country level there is U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that is responsible for protecting the public health of U.S. citizens by assuring the safety of food (FDA, 2011). For Europa, there is a Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) providing food and feed control authorities with an effective tool to exchange information about measures taken responding to serious risks detected in relation to food or feed among their member states. (Europa, 2011). In the cross country level, we have the World Health Organization (WHO) that had established the International Food Safety Authorities Network (INFOSAN) which is a joint initiative between WHO and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). This a global network includes of 177 member states. Each has a designated INFOSAN emergency contact point for communication between national food safety authorities and the INFOSAN secretariat regarding urgent events. Recognizing that food safety is often a shared responsibility, countries are also asked to identity focal points in other ministries or relevant agencies to receive INFOSAN communications. All of these authorities are trying to provide a platform for the easy information exchange on food safety alerts. However, it still requires the member states / countries to have a structured food safety alert system and related information in order to interface with them. Our ARAS will be served as the official food safety alert system in Hong Kong to be integrated with these authorities.

Food Importers– These importers are the main source of food supplies for Hong Kong. They are responsible to ensure the food safety of their goods. Every food lot to be imported to Hong Kong is required to be randomly inspected at border control points unless that food lot is certified by other food safety authorities. The linkage among the importers,

wholesaler and retails may also be an issue of the traceability of the food lot, but it’s not covered in this paper. The wholesalers and retails are simply grouped as “Trades” as the recipients of the alerts. In ARAS, food importers are also the recipients of alerts through their information system in place or the mobile application to be supplied by ARAS.

Company Registry in Hong Kong –The Company Registry (CR) is responsible for providing services to incorporate local companies. All company information including Trades can be found in their database (Company Registry, 2011). ARAS will retrieve company information to be linked to the alerts. Recipients of an alert can get the affected trades information easily. One of the prerequisites for ARAS to work is that the information systems in CR shall be equipped with proper programmatic interfaces which are not yet available at this moment.

Food Research Laboratory –The Food Research Laboratory has been set up within the Public Health Laboratory Center (PHLC), which was completed in late 2001. The laboratory researches conducted will provide scientific data for risk assessment and formulation of food surveillance strategies. Any suspicious food lot will be sent to the laboratory for microbiological testing includes bacteria and viruses, and also the chemical testing includes food additives, contaminants and natural toxins, etc. The testing result will be generated and sent to CFS once confirmed. However, the existing laboratory test ordering involved a lot of manual processes that induces unnecessary turnaround time. With the introduction of ARAS, we aim to order and receive tests through Internet with the integration of their Laboratory Information System (LIS). (Public Health Laboratory Services Branch, 2011)

Mobile Individuals – These include consumers, Trades (wholesaler and retail), health inspectors, doctors and administrator. Enquiry of alerts is available for all mobile individuals with their smart phone or other mobile device. Health Inspectors and Trades have additional agent in their smart phone to process the work flow of food recall while consumers do not. Consumers, doctors in HA or DH can report food safety problem. Administrator can monitor the pending alerts and their responses. Health inspectors are also responsible for any routine or ad hoc food inspection in Hong Kong.

Food safety reporting call center –People can call the 24-hour Hotline that is handled by the "1823 Call Center" of the Government to make suggestions, enquiries, complaints, and obtain information pamphlets and application forms etc. Callers may also choose to listen to pre-recorded messages. This centralized platform is provided for all stakeholders as a single contact for the food safety problem reporting. The call center can monitor the enquiry status and follow up between the caller and the target party.

Hospital Authority(HA) –The Hospital Authority is a statutory body established under the Hospital Authority Ordinance in 1990. It is responsible for managing Hong Kong's public hospitals and their services to our community. Food incidents may sometimes reported during the diagnosis of patients.

Department of Health (DH)–The Department of Health is the health adviser of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and an executive arm in health legislation and policy. DH also operates government clinics that is also one of the control point that food safety problem can be found. Port Health Unit of DH is also responsible for any health issues at border control point.

Center for Food Safety (CFS)– CFS is under Food and Environmental Hygiene Department(FEHD). Its Responsibilities include planning and overseeing the implementation of a territory-wide food surveillance program to ensure food is fit for human consumption; Food import control and export certification; Management of all food incidents, including investigation of food borne illness outbreaks at food premises, management of food safety crises and coordination of food recalls; Liaison with international food authorities, food traders and other parties to ensure effective food safety control; Formulation of measures to prevent and control diseases originating in live food animals which have a public health angle, including liaison with the Mainland and overseas authorities; Overseeing conduct of chemical tests at Man Kam To Food Control Office on imported food from the Mainland. CFS is the major stakeholder that centrally manages food safety in Hong Kong.

Center for Health Protection (CHP)–CHP focuses on expanding the disease surveillance network with the aid of information technology, strengthening infection control, enhancing laboratory diagnostic capacity, conducting risk communication and health promotion, developing applied research and training programs, and preparing emergency response plans. Combating non-communicable diseases (NCD) is also an important part of CHP's mission. The work includes surveillance of NCD, as well as promotion of healthy lifestyle and other initiatives aimed at encouraging healthy living in the community. When food safety alerts involve food poisoning or potential disease outbreak, CHP is required to be notified ASAP in order to stop the crisis.

According to the requirements, ARAS requires timely notification of information about the food safety alert and carries out food recall ordering when necessary. Moreover, the alert shall be delivered to appropriate stakeholders in an accurate and efficient manner to prevent delay of the food alerts promulgation and food recall process. To increase the mobility of ARAS, the Internet together with smart phones is the best combination, although PCs are still compatible to ARAS for better coverage of our service. Therefore, ARAS needs to consider the interoperability among different systems and data format, which makes web service the best choice to my knowledge.

The major functions of ARAS include the following: (1) It shall provide structured database of food safety alerts, with the extended interfaces to acquire the information related, such as trades information, and food lot information that is searchable by clients; (2) Provide agents in the backend system and clients to enable automatic alerts retrieval based on predefined filter; (3) On top of the alerts, food recall order shall be enabled for designated stakeholder (e.g. health

inspectors, CFS) to request the concerned trade to take action, with the acknowledgement mechanism to ensure the order is enforced ; and (4) Exception handling if the recall order is not enforced within a time limit and automatically inform relevant stakeholders to take contingent actions.

Food Safety Management Processes and WorkflowsARAS Actions: Notification, Information Request,

Action Request to TradesAlerts Managed by AMS

Web Services and Mobile DevicesFigure 1. The role of alerts in the ARAS

IV. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE

Figure 2. SEMS Architecture highlighting the AMS

According to Chiu et al. (2009), the ARAS based on AMS supports a stakeholder to be both a service provider and a requester. Each stakeholder can use the AMS to both submit and receive alerts. The Incoming Alert Monitor is responsible for receiving and queuing alerts and enacting the corresponding services (processes). Incoming alerts are received as invocation of a web service, or information retrieval via the Web Portal. They can trigger the execution of the appropriate alert handlers in the application logic through the Process Execution module. In addition, the Process and Alert Definition module supports a tool with which users may define the tasks and their associated alerts according to their requirements.

The Outgoing Alert Monitor subsystem is responsible for creating and submitting the alerts by means of Web services requests to the corresponding stakeholder as well as monitoring their responses. As for human service providers (such as health inspectors and trades), alerts are delivered to their mobile devices. The Outgoing Alert Monitor subsystem consists of three modules: the Urgencies Strategy Definition, the Role Matching, and the Service Provider Monitor modules. The Role Matching module is responsible for identifying the service providers to which the alert will be forwarded. The Urgencies Strategy Definition module specifies the policies that will be followed if the alert is not

acknowledged within the deadline. The Service Provider Monitoring module is responsible for applying the strategies thus defined. Its functions include sending alert messages, receiving response, maintaining alert status, and logging information.

V. INFRASTRUCTURE AND ALERT MECHANISMS

Schedule

Response

Flexible Task

Role1..*

require

Specific Task

1..*

Human Sevice Provider

1..*1..*Web Service Provider

Service Provider

0..n

1

0..n

11..*1..*

Capability Profile

11

specify

Devices* 1..** 1..*

Service Access Points1..*1..*

Alert

0..1

1

0..1

1

0..*0..*

send send

Data Request

Process Request

AMS Task

0..*1 0..*1

generates

generates

Figure 3. Alert conceptual model and extension

Figure 5 summarizes the design of an alert conceptual model in a class diagram of the UML which fully adopted the design proposed by Chiu et al (2009). Based on the prevailing alert model, we have developed a bit on the extended model of the alert content which explain the actual alert information to be used and the linkage of different sources of information. Food safety alert should not be stored in a single class which is not flexible when designing the system. As shown in figure 6, Food safety alerts should contain trades information, food lot information and the relevant enquiry information. A trade’s information is linked with a Trade ID which is unique for each trade, with the interfaces to CR. The trade’s information class is further expanded with the classification of different trade type. For example, separate class for Beef trades storing the name, addresses, BR number etc. for each trade is stored in one class, Dairy trades information are stored in another class. The above design is to reduce the size of a single entity to improve the performance of the trade information retrieval. For the food lot information, a food lot ID is assigned for

each food lot, a food lot should contain the food name, ingredients, date of manufacturing etc. Manufacturer information is a separate class linked by a unique manufacturer ID, which storing the manufacturer’s name, address etc. The enquiry info class stores the enquiry information of the related food alert. For example, if the food alert is originally reported by a hospital, the enquiry information of that hospital is stored with the enquiry ID linked to the Food safety alert class, so that the alert recipients can contact the concerned stakeholder for further enquiry regarding that particular alert. This model is just act as a starting point to brainstorm the extended food safety alert model, it’s flexible and allows any further extension.Figure 7 depicts the typical alert life cycle. All processing and messaging for a food safety alert are logged for auditing purposes. If the alert is a specific one (e.g., when the process requests enquiry with a specific official such as health inspector), role matching is not required. If the alert is a flexible one, a matching algorithm is invoked to search for suitable service providers (e.g., select the concerned trades related to that particular alert). The “Determine device / web service access point” node determines the device for a human or the Web Service access point for a Web Services provider respectively. And then, the alert is sent to appropriate recipients accordingly. If the “Check if response received by deadline” node fails, the AMS will increase the alert urgency level according to the urgency level definition in Figure 8.

Figure 4. Typical alert life cycle

Urgency Level

Action Description

Urgent Default for non-food poisoning caseVery Urgent Submit a second alert to the same problematic

trade / retail, notifying it about the approaching deadline

Critical Redirect the alert to health inspectors that is immediately available to response and perform direct site inspection, also copy to the same trade / retail again

Very Critical Send the alert to all related trades / retail that selling the same category of food; send alert to CFS to instruct related health inspectors that is immediately available to response and perform direct site inspection; Food poisoning cases will be assigned to this level by default

Figure 5. Urgency level escalation

Firstly, if the alert is for non-food poisoning case, it is marked as “urgent” and then sends out the alert to concerned trade, if there is no response received from specific trade within a time limit, it will resend the alert and mark it as “Very Urgent” to notifying it about the approaching deadline. If the concerned trade still not response, the later urgency will be raised to “Critical”, the alert will be sent to the nearest heath inspectors that is immediately available to perform direct site inspection, also copy to the concerned trade again to let it know that the health inspectors are coming over. If the case still not responded by recipients, it will be raised to “Very Critical”, sending the alert to all trades which are under the same trade type to take prompt action like stop selling the specific type of food, CFS will also be alerted to instruct health inspectors to take immediate actions. Since food poisoning cases induce much higher risks, they will be assigned to “Very Critical” by default.

VI. SYSTEM WALKTHROUGH & PROTOTYPES

In figure 9, the life cycle of a food safety alert at border control point s proposed. When a food lot arrived at border, the health inspectors will check if that food lot has safety certificate from other food safety authorities (e.g. FDA). If yes, the food is allowed to be imported without sampling. If no certificate provided, health inspectors will take samples from the food lot and send to the Food Research Laboratory for investigation. At this point, an alert will be sent to the laboratory by AMS with the food lot information, importer information, and manufacturer information, the concerned food lot will be held in a staging area at border control point. Once the laboratory result is ready, the LIS there will check if that food lot is safe. If yes, an alert will be sent to the health inspectors at border control point to allow import. Otherwise, an alert will be sent to CFS. CFS will then determine the target group of recipients for that alert through the role matching module. There should be multiple alerts to be sent to different parties, the concerned trades, related health inspectors and other food safety authorities. The subsequent steps will follow the urgency level definition and make sure the alert can get response by a service provider. If the response time does not meet target, separate alert will be sent to administrator as well. All alerts are logged and monitored by CFS.

Apart from the routine inspection of food lot, CFS is also responsible to handle the food safety reporting from different stakeholders (e.g. consumers, DH, HA, doctors). For example, when the call center received a call, the call center personnel will first identify whether that is a food poisoning case. If it is a non-food poisoning case, the call center will simply forward the case to CFS. CFS will then study the case, if it is confirmed with food safety problem (may need verification from laboratory as well but we don’t bother here), CFS will trigger to send alerts based on the similar mechanism specified in figure 9 with the ARAS. If the call involves food poisoning case, it will be sent to the health inspectors directly and the health inspectors will go to concerned trades and take samples to laboratory for investigation. If the problem cannot be found at the trades reported by call center, health inspectors will report to the call center and gather more information. Unless the case is resolved, health inspectors will keep find other suspected trades to continue the inspection. If a food lot is found with food safety problem during inspection, health inspectors can generate and alert with their mobile devices and send to CFS. Subsequent workflow will be the same as other cases.

Although there are many smart phones out there, we have chosen iPhone as the development environment of ARAS

because of the big and clear screen. Figure 14 shows the enquiry page of ARAS. The user can select an alert from the list or search other alerts by keywords. The functions are the same as the one in web portal that provide food lot info, trade info, and reporting function. Figure 15 shows the function for reporting a new food safety case, user shall first select the trade type, and then type in the details, and user can also provide attachment. The case is in free text format and will be forwarded to call center for further follow up.

The above functions are in active mode, which requires the user to search, select and type. Other than those, trades and health inspectors should have the mobile application installed in their smart phone to receive alerts automatically in a passive mode. Figure 16 shows a notification alert pop-up, alert is retrieved by the mobile agent in the iPhone with the POF enabled (Kwon, 2010). To reuse the existing resources of RAS, the trades registered in RAS previously can also receive the alerts for their trade type by applying the account of ARAS.

VII. DISCUSSION

Based on the discussion in previous section and the concept illustration with prototype, the design of the whole system is already visualized. But ARAS is designed based on web services technology, where is the web services details? It may be another good research direction for us. Although the web services are not listed in detail in this paper, classification of the web services are defined beforehand to assist the physical system design in the future. “Notification alerts” is for the verification and identification of the food safety problem (e.g. from laboratory to CFS, from trades to CFS). “General information alerts” is for the inquiry of food lot information such as country origin, batch numbers and trades that selling the food lot. “Trades information alerts” give information for a specific trade such as locations of their factory and the retails. And the “Recall order alerts” deliver recall instructions to involved trades.

With the implementation of ARAS, food safety authorities can improve the existing problems that involved unreliable and slow manual procedures, handle exceptions that cannot be provided by email and fax and liaise with variety of parties and personnel. With the AMS monitor that can track alerts and take actions timely, the enforcement of food recall order can be achieved easily. Health Inspectors can improve food inspection processes with efficient alert model, decision support by searching through a structured

database, increased mobility of the system can let the inspectors to provide efficient food safety problem reporting. Trades (wholesalers / retails) can receive alerts from mobile devices and recall food lots immediately to prevent food safety hazards. They can also have efficient enquiry on food lots information and establish effective coordination with Government. Citizens in Hong Kong can get them notified (push mode) instead of just publishing the alerts on web sites without proper search function (pull mode). ARAS also improves communications between Government and citizen by providing the web portal and mobile application for food safety problem reporting. For the healthcare providers (e.g. CHP, DH and HA), ARAS can get them notified with the updated information of food safety problems, so that they can make prior arrangement on their resources whenever there is a food incident. These are the functions that ARAS can provide to fit into the stakeholders’ requirements to a modern food safety alerts system.

The reliable system deployment proposed in section 5.2 includes all the possible options including hardware and software. However, the implementation of all those items may be too expensive under a limited budget of the Government. To tackle this problem, the deployment of the system can be divided into phases. The first phase can be the core infrastructure within the Internal ARAS and the integration of call center, to quickly get the platform on stage for the internal operation use. The second phase can be the External ARAS after a period of smooth operation of Internal ARAS, so that the budget can be acquired easier with the already-showed achievement of Internal ARAS. The network acceleration and load balancing measures are flexible to add at any time after phase two, in case the performance of the system is not satisfactory.

The advantages of ARAS includes (1) Integration and automation of the current food safety reporting processes (telephone, fax and email) to deliver timely alerts to all stakeholders; (2) Increases the efficiency of the food recall processes and store the food safety alerts in a structured way for easy retrieval ; (3) Web Services technology provides the underlying open platform for integration, (4) Mobile application increase the mobility of the system and stakeholders can receive alerts “anytime, anywhere” and (5) Reliable infrastructure to make the system “always on”.

VIII. CONCLUSION

In this paper, we have presented an ARAS architecture, which supports alert notification and food recall order in the event of a food safety problem. ARAS deployment segregates the environment into Internal ARAS, External ARAS and the call center which can provide reliable service to stakeholders. The whole system relies on AMS which supports communications of both human and web services. Moreover, mobile application with mobile agents is also introduced to enable remote access from anywhere with the support of MAIS. Therefore, this architecture provides a high mobility, reliable and efficient way to

deal with the food safety alerts among different stakeholders. Furthermore, with the support of web services, the integration process is easy because of the interoperability.

In summary, ARAS supports alert notification and enquiry service in the event of a food safety problem. Separated infrastructure for Government officials and other stakeholders is designed to balance the workload of the system and provide high availability in case of system breakdown. AMS is adopted for ARAS for the coordination of various functions or tasks at various stages of a food safety alert, including detection, notification, remedy, and recovery. ARAS can be built with mobility and stability to various stakeholders to be connected from different places and form an efficient communication network. Most importantly, we have the food safety information manipulation and process management improved. Food safety problem cannot be avoided, but can be mitigated.

As for future work, we plan to explore more on the urgency tables to further classify the problems to meet the business needs. Mobile application interoperability study is another concern because of the exploding of mobile technologies with different application platform and operating systems (e.g. iPhone / Android). We will also study the deployment strategies of the system for trades with their limited computer knowledge. Moreover, handling the enforcement of food recall processes is another research area since the failure of commitments from trades in relation to food recall which can only be controlled by human processes for now. With the domain knowledge from healthcare industry, ARAS may also be enhanced to evaluate the impact of failure of food recalls based on the nature of food contamination. We may also study how to integrate the call center to other food safety authorities’ reporting network (e.g. INFOSAN from Word Health Organization (WHO)). Finally, we will research for the measures to further increase the system reliability and security, such as redundant hardware, duplicate connection links and nodes, powerful firewalls and intrusion prevention systems to prevent denial of service to the system.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This paper is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos. 60873022 and 60903053, the Open Fund provided by State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology of Nanjing University, and the Key Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province of China under Grant No.Z1100822.

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