PS-06Agriculture & Food Systems
FoodBridge
Intelligent Surplus Food Rescue and Last-Mile Matching
SDG 2SDG 12
The challenge
Restaurants, hostels, events and institutions may have safe surplus food while nearby shelters, community kitchens or verified organisations have unmet demand. The main difficulty is not only discovering surplus, but matching quantity, food type, remaining safe-use time, transport and recipient capacity quickly enough to avoid waste. Design an AI-assisted coordination platform that ranks feasible donor-recipient matches, considers perishability and travel time, and provides a transparent handover workflow. The system should not encourage unsafe redistribution and should include clear food-safety and verification controls.
What a working submission needs
Build a prototype with donor and recipient onboarding, surplus listing, need listing, time-sensitive matching, map-based pickup/drop suggestions and a completed-handover record.
Demonstrate at least five simulated listings and explain why the selected match is preferred.
Stretch goals
demand forecasting, volunteer routing, cold-chain flags or waste/impact analytics.
Optional. A working core counts for more than feature count.Suggested stack
Web/mobile application, AI/ML models, a mapping or dashboard interface, and open APIs as appropriate to the problem.
Scope and responsibility
Healthcare, safety and public-sector challenges are decision-support tools, not autonomous clinical, legal, emergency-command or enforcement systems. Name your prototype’s limitations in the demo. Judging weighs a working core, justified use of AI, technical quality, real-world impact and responsible design above feature count.
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