Valumics

The VALUMICS project is a Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation project that addresses specific challenges facing the food system and food value chains in Europe. VALUMICS work aims to improve understanding the functioning of different links in the food chain, their viability, and sustainability within specific supply chains and across food chains, and how they provide the capacity to foster the sustainability and resilience of the food system.

The Valumics Project is co-funded by the Horizon 2020 program of the European Union and submitted under H2020-SFS-2016-2017 call Innovation Action, on-topic SFS-33-2016 with the project 727243-2.

VALUMICS Horizon 2020 project objectives

develop approaches and tools to analyze the structure, dynamics, resilience and impact of food chains on food security, economic development and the environment
explore the impact of public regulations (quotas, subsidies, public procurement policies, etc.) and private initiatives (certification, Corporate Social Responsibility, marketing, retailer standards, fair trade, etc.), which have shaped these food chains to assess the conditions under which these interventions enhance or not resilience, integrity, and sustainability
analyze the suitability of selected indicators to capture the evolution of resilience, the sustainability and the integrity of a set of major food value chains across Europe, and their transformative capacity
develop an integrated modelling approach and use for the analysis of external and internal drivers influencing the performance of food value chains and demonstrate options for improved business strategies
build foresight scenarios to reflect on the possible evolution of those food chains and on the kind of public, private and civil society instruments that would enable enhancing their desired outcomes or counteract their negative impacts

ASSIST Software role is to build an integrated dynamic simulation model, quantitatively test the model developed, and provide understanding about the drivers and outcomes of behaviours within food value networks, which will enable participants, industry and regulatory policymakers to explore the implications of a wide variety of contractual and regulatory scenarios and interventions for improving resilience, integrity, and sustainability of food value chains.

VALUMICS Partners

The consortium driving the VALUMICS project (Horizon 2020 – Call: Sustainable Food Security) has a core of 19 European partners from Iceland represented by Haskoli Islands and MarkMar, Norway represented by SINTEF, Finland represented by Luke and LUT University, Sweden represented by CHALMERS, the UK represented by University of Hertfordshire and Newcastle University, Germany represented by CSCP and IAMO, Italy represented by ALMA MATER STUDIORUM - Università di Bologna, ART-ER, and ERVET, Czechia represented by Česká zemědělská Univerzita v Praze, Ireland represented by University College Dublin, France represented by IDDRI, Belgium represented by EAS, Spain represented by FIAB, Vietnam represented by UEH, China represented by China Agricultural University, Romania represented by our company ASSIST Software, and Austria represented by REWE Group.