Progress 09/01/10 to 08/31/11
Outputs
OUTPUTS: The Integrated Online Catalogue on Risk Assessments (ICRA) has been completed and is now hosted by JIFSAN at the FoodRisk.org website. Risk assessors from FoodDTU and the National Institute for Public Health and Environment (RIVM) are finishing entering their risk assessment models at ICRA. JIFSAN has started transferring the remaining Campylobacter risk assessment models from CRAF to ICRA. An online tutorial on how to enter a model on ICRA is also being developed by JIFSAN. After the tutorial is ready, all the models from CRAF are transferred to ICRA, and RIVM and FoodDTU complete entering their models, JIFSAN will invite risk assessors that developed models for Salmonella in pork meat and Listeria monocytogenes in ready-to-eat meats to enter their models on ICRA. The server that hosts ICRA and the other ranking tool, iRisk, is operating as anticipated. Through a partnership with the Information School (iSchool) at the University of Maryland and the USDA National Agriculture Library (NAL), JIFSAN worked to update the current NAL thesaurus to ensure it included risk analysis and food safety terms often used in the field. More than 200 terms were added and revised to meet the project needs. JIFSAN worked with NAL to insert the new terms and also provided guidance with their definition and selection of related terms and hierarchical placement. Now, every search performed at FoodRisk.org's database is linked to the NAL thesaurus which has improved the retrieval of records from the database. The thesaurus is also used to index each record that is entered in the database. After the implementation of the thesaurus, over 4000 records were revised to make sure the key words were appropriate and reflected the thesaurus' new terms. The search engine was also redesigned to incorporate boolean search. Results can now be ordered by publication date, author or title. The risk assessment repository was also completed and is available online at http://foodrisk.org/rarepository/. PARTICIPANTS: Several institutions have been part of this project. The Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (JIFSAN) is the leader, and a few people from JIFSAN are involved in the project in different capacities: Dr. Juliana M. Ruzante (PI): leadership and coordination; Samantha Watters (FoodRisk Programs Coordinator): thesaurus, risk assessment repository and indexation; Kyle McKillop (IT manager); Chris Lentowski (web programmer); Timothy Shaffer (IT): assigned to manage server needs for this project. In addition to JIFSAN, we have established collaborations with the Information school at the University of Maryland and Dr. Van Qu and Dr. Pengyi Zhang helped with indexation methods, thesaurus organization and database infrastructure. And at the National Agriculture Library (NAL) at USDA, Ms. Lori Finch and Ms. Nancy Mathews worked with Samantha Watters and iSchool in the development and update of the thesaurus. Our partners in Europe working on ICRA are from RIVM in the Netherlands and Food DTU in Denmark. At RIVM the project is being lead by Dr. Arie Havelaar and Dr. Arno Swartz. At RIVM there are also two web programmers/developers, Jeroen Seller and Ger Jan te Dorsthorst and at Food DTU, Dr. Maarten Nauta. TARGET AUDIENCES: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: There were few modifications that were made along the second year of the project. For the risk assessment repository, only microbial risk assessments were included. Chemical risk assessments were excluded because once we evaluated the records retrieved in our search, we concluded that most of them were safety assessments rather than risk assessments. So, in consultation with FoodRisk.org's steering committee, it was decided to include only microbial risk assessments in the repository in order to minimize confusion with the terminology and be able to conclude the project within the time and resources available. The records identified as chemical safety assessments are still part of the database and can be searched using the regular search engine. The risk ranking tool, iRisk, being developed by FDA/CFSAN in conjunction with Risk Sciences International inc. (RSI) has been peer reviewed; however, reviewers suggested a public version of iRisk. FDA/CFSAN has signed another one year extension with RSI so iRisk can implement reviewers' comments and develop the public version. FoodRisk should receive the public version of iRisk the middle of next calendar year. In the meanwhile, we will work with RSI to develop the online tutorial and are keeping a close contact with Dr. Sherri Dennis, the person at CFSAN responsible for the development of this tool.
Impacts
The USDA/NAL thesaurus structure has been successfully updated and implemented into the FoodRisk search. The partnership with USDA/NAL has an impact as through the collaboration, FoodRisk has updated the NAL thesaurus, which is one of the most comprehensive thesauruses in the area of agriculture, having annual editions in both English and Spanish. NAL thesaurus was lacking many of the risk analysis terms that FoodRisk utilizes for search and indexation, which precluded FoodRisk to fully implement NAL thesaurus without these updates. Therefore, to optimize our resources and expertise, we worked with NAL to add the risk analysis terms required by FoodRisk, to the new edition of the NAL thesaurus (to be officially released January 2011). At that point, FoodRisk was and is now able to take full advantage of this comprehensive resource. The collaboration enriches and complements the NAL thesaurus that is used worldwide as a reference in agriculture. FoodRisk on the other hand adopted the existing format of NAL instead of creating its own Thesaurus. The two institutions worked together so their needs were met and the benefit to the scientific community can be maximized. We envision this collaboration to go beyond this project as new terms and topics come up and needed to be added to the thesaurus so it is a current and useful resource.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
|
Progress 09/01/09 to 08/31/10
Outputs
OUTPUTS: No data to report as output at this time. We continue to work on the development of the Integrated Online Catalogue on Risk Assessments (ICRA) together with our partners at RIVM and Food DTU. ICRA's functional design has been completed and is being implemented as well as the database and the risk manager web application. Through discussion with our expert panel composed of representatives from USDA/FSIS, FDA/CFSAN, JIFSAN, FoodDTU and the National Institute for Public Health and Environment (RIVM), we have already identified the two microbial risk assessments to be incorporated in ICRA in the next 2 years and those are: Salmonella in pork meat and Listeria monocytogenes in ready to eat meats. In addition, the server to host ICRA and the other ranking tool, iRisk, has been purchased and is already hosting FoodRisk.org. A partnership with the Information School (iSchool) at the University of Maryland and the USDA National Agriculture Library (NAL) has been established to help with the development of the thesaurus and evaluation of FoodRisk database infrastructure and indexation methods. The evaluation of the FoodRisk database on risk assessment is also ongoing to select a list of completed microbial and chemical risk assessments that have been conducted to date and will be part of the risk assessment repository. We have queried our database and the first screening of documents was made. The next steps are to perform a second and more comprehensive evaluation of the documents and perform a broad search to assure the repository is up-to-date. PARTICIPANTS: Several institutions have been part of this project. The Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (JIFSAN) is the leader and couple of people from JIFSAN are involved in the project in different capacities: Dr. Juliana M. Ruzante (PI): leadership and coordination; Jennifer Chetty (undergraduate student): thesaurus and indexation; Kyle McKillop (IT manager); Jose Galdamez (web programmer); Samantha Watters (Program manager specialist): thesaurus and risk assessment inventory; Timothy Shaffer (IT): assigned to manage server needs for this project. In addition to JIFSAN, we have established collaborations with the Information school at the University of Maryland and Dr. Yan Qu and Dr. Pengyi Zhang are helping with indexation methods, thesaurus organization and database infrastructure. And at the National Agriculture Library (NAL) at USDA, Ms. Lori Finch and Ms. Nancy Mathews are working with Samantha Watters and iSchool in the development and update of the thesaurus. Our partners in Europe working on ICRA are from RIVM in the Netherlands and Food DTU in Denmark. At RIVM the project is being lead by Dr. Arie Havelaar and Dr. Arno Swartz. At RIVM there are also two web programmers/developers, Jeroen Selier and Ger Jan te Dorsthorst and at Food DTU, Dr. Maarten Nauta. TARGET AUDIENCES: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: There were couple of modifications that were made along the progress of the project. A decision was made to hire a program manager specialist, Samantha Watters, instead of a graduate student to develop the thesaurus, build the repository of risk assessments and help with the development of ICRA. Samantha has significant experience with risk assessment documents and the terms used in the field, and is able to perform all the activities a graduate students would be capable, being more focused as she works full time in this project. The other modification was that we no longer will develop a thesaurus that is exclusive for FoodRisk. Instead, we are partnering with USDA/NAL to strengthen, update and complement their existing thesaurus in the area of food safety and risk analysis. The benefits of joining efforts with NAL are enormous and ensure the sustainability of the thesaurus beyond the end of this project. NAL updates their terms every year and has dedicated staff responsible for the maintenance and update of the resource. Foodrisk complements NAL's work, by providing expert knowledge in the terms used in risk analysis. This is an extremely beneficial collaboration that benefits both sides, to FoodRisk it ensures an updated resource in the long run and for NAL ensures a comprehensive and more complete thesaurus that can be used by several entities in US and abroad. ICRA development is delayed couple of months but will not affect the timeline of the project. The main reason for the delay is that it was decided to eliminate the Excel templates that would be filled by risk assessors and manually entered in ICRA by Samantha Watters. Instead we are developing a risk assessor interface within ICRA. Risk assessors will request assess to ICRA and once awarded assess, he/she will be able to enter the information into a database using an electronic form that is being finalized. This information is them electronically submitted to the moderator who approves or not the submissions. If approved, the model is automatically uploaded on ICRA's database. This reduces data entry errors and will allow to easier expand to other food-commodity pairs, allowing greater participation and broader use of the tool. The risk ranking tool, iRisk, being developed by FDA/CFSAN in conjunction with Risk Sciences International Inc. (RSI), is still under development. FDA/CFSAN has signed another one year extension with RSI so iRisk can be further improved. FoodRisk will receive the final version of iRisk middle next calendar year - we are keeping a close contact with Dr. Sherri Dennis the person at CFSAN responsible for the development of this tool.
Impacts
As pointed before, at this point there are no findings or results to be reported. We expect that in the end of this calendar year, through our collaboration with USDA/NAL and iSchool/UMD, we will have finalized the thesaurus which will be implemented at FoodRisk and also have completed the development of ICRA. The partnership with USDA/NAL will have an impact as through the collaboration, FoodRisk is updating the NAL thesaurus, which is one of the most comprehensive thesaurus in the area of agriculture, having annual editions in both English and Spanish. NAL thesaurus lacks many of the risk analysis terms that FoodRisk utilizes for search and indexation, which precludes FoodRisk to fully implement NAL thesaurus as it currently is. Therefore, to optimize our resources and expertise, we are working with NAL to add the risk analysis terms required by FoodRisk, to the new edition of the NAL thesaurus (to be officially released January 2011), at that point FoodRisk will be able to take full advantage of this comprehensive resource. The collaboration will enrich and complement the NAL thesaurus that is used worldwide as a reference in agriculture. FoodRisk on the other hand will adopt the existing format of NAL instead of creating its own Thesaurus. The two institutions will work together so their needs are met and the benefit to the scientific community can be maximized. We envision this collaboration to go beyond this project as new terms and topics come up and needed to be added to the thesaurus so it is a current and useful resource.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
|
|