Web page of the project TOMAS MORPH
The busy lifestyle of today’s society in which people, regardless of gender, work and move from place to place constantly not leaves often enough time to devote to the acquisition and preparation of quality food. This coupled with the lack of physical activity induces high levels of overweight and obesity in the population, which have not ceased to be increasing in recent years. Therefore, the objective of this project is to study and propose extensions and improvements to mono-objective and multi-objective optimization models and apply them to study the problem of planning healthy and balanced menus. Solving the problem is practically impossible with conventional operation research techniques when the instances are large and with numerous attributes. It is for this reason that the use of meta-heuristics, including evolutionary algorithms, is proposed. In the particular case of solving multi-objective variants of the problem, among the advantages of using these resolution strategies are: its ability to generate an approximation of the Pareto front since the first generations/iterations; their independence of the mathematical properties of the objective functions and constraints, and their polynomic dependence on the size of the instance. Thus, it is necessary to design and implement different encodings, heuristics and meta-heuristics and determine which ones provide better results. Additionally, the use of different techniques will be tested in parallel, with particular emphasis on allocating more computational resources to those algorithms that are best suited. This will facilitate and accelerate the search process, as well as offering good value for time, avoid checking each algorithm manually.
With this project we initiate a collaboration with the Directorate-General of Public Health of the Canary Islands Government which has among its functions to establish and implement plans, programs and actions in the field of environmental health, food hygiene and pharmaceutical management. Among its activities there is the Eco-canteens School Program for Canary Islands promoted and coordinated by the Canarian Institute of Food Quality (ICCA) in collaboration with the General Directorate for Innovation and Educational Development of the Ministry of Education, Universities and Sustainability. These three institutions are not only interested in the results of the project but in to provide access to their databases and interviews with participants in the program so that the set of specific requirements of the problem can be defined. Thus, the project is facing its transfer to industry.
The project is aimed to make progress in a área of social interest by applying Information Technologies. The proposal also aims to create over the next four years, a multidisciplinary research group dedicated to the design of multi-objective algorithms for the solving public health problems, as well as for the user interfaces that will allow their use by non-expert users. This Project commits for a determined internationalization of the results, with impact publications, visits to releated-research foreign teams, and training of the research staff.