A fuzzy-based model to implement the global safety buildings index assessment for agri-food buildings

Abstract

The latest EU policies focus on the issue of food safety with a view to ensuring adequate and standard quality levels for the food produced and/or consumed within the EC. To that purpose, the environment where agricultural products are manufactured and processed plays a crucial role in achieving food hygiene. As a consequence, it is of the outmost importance to adopt proper building solutions which meet health and hygiene requirements as well as to use suitable tools to measure the levels achieved. Similarly, it is necessary to verify and evaluate the level of workers’ safety and welfare in their working environment. Workers’ safety has not only an ethical and social value but also an economic implication, since possible accidents or environmental stressors are the major causes of the lower efficiency and productivity of workers. Therefore, it is fundamental to design suitable models of analysis that allow assessing buildings as a whole, taking into account both health and hygiene safety as well as workers’ safety and welfare. Hence, this paper proposes an assessment model that, based on an established study protocol and on the application of a fuzzy logic procedure, allows assessing the global safety level of an agri-food building by means of a global safety buildings index. The model here presented is original since it uses fuzzy logic to evaluate the performances of both the technical and environmental systems of an agri-food building in terms of health and hygiene safety of the manufacturing process as well as of workers’ health and safety. The result of the assessment is expressed through a triangular fuzzy membership function which allows carrying out comparative analyses of different buildings. A specific procedure was developed to apply the model to a case study which tested its operational simplicity and the validity of its results. The proposed model allows obtaining a synthetic and global value of the building performance of each of its functional areas, in terms of food hygiene and workers’ safety and welfare, as well as highlighting possible weaknesses. Though the model may be applied in either the design or the operational phase of a building, this paper focuses on its application to certain buildings already operating in a specific productive context.

Environmental indoor thermal control of extra virgin olive oil storage room with phase change materials

“…The PCM application (Caprara and Stoppiello, 2012) are not widespread in agrifood buildings for these reasons but the PCM in food storage buildings will be very important in the future because the control of temperature in storage stage is fundamental to obtain a high sustainable quality of the production. In fact the quality and the sustainability of food process depend on the building where the process is conducted (Barreca et al, 2014;Barreca and Praticò, 2018). EVOO is appreciated by consumers for its unique sensory characteristics and high nutritional values, for these reasons, the olive oil industry has to monitor oil quality throughout the production line and has to be able to provide realistic information on quality considering the temperature changes during storage and distribution.…”

ITACAFood: A Model to Certificate the Sustainability of Food Processing Facilities

“…Therefore, it is worthwhile to define a method for assessing building sustainability in the food industry, because in this sector, the processing of the product assumes a fundamental role that often clashes with the needs of workers [18,19]. In particular, when the processing of the food production has to respect a quality protocol to guarantee a genuine taste, this process must also be healthy and hygienically safe.…”

Assessment of Passive Retrofitting Strategies to Improve the Thermal Performance of Extra-Virgin Olive Oil Storage Area in Traditional Rural Olive Mills

“…They need more flexibility in order to meet the consumer's demand [4]. They have to be equipped with modern processing machines, to respect new food hygiene rules and to guarantee workers' safety [5]. For all the above reasons, it is very important to define specific criteria to consider the rehabilitation of traditional rural buildings, since, in general, rehabilitating them costs much more than building modern ones.…”