Ph.D. Project: Harnessing Artificial Intelligence for Sustainable Egg Production (funded, $30,000 annually for 4 years)

The livestock sector faces increasing pressure to identify and adopt strategies to reduce resource use and environmental impacts so as to maintain social license within the context of sustainable production and consumption. While relatively efficient in terms of environmental outcomes per unit of product compared to other livestock species, the scale and projected increase in production in the global egg sector necessitates concerted efforts towards achieving this goal. Predictive analytics using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques provide novel and potentially powerful meanings of integrating and parsing diverse data streams from the poultry sector. In particular, AI techniques can be used to explore past trends and patterns, forecast future expectations, and identify key sustainability improvement opportunities. These AI outcomes can be incorporated with Multiple-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) to reveal sustainable solutions (i.e. strategies/technologies) that take into account multiple, potentially competing objectives.

This four year, funded Ph.D. project will answer this challenge by:

1. Preprocessing Canadian egg industry data through tasks such as outlier identification and prediction of missing data, which makes data streams suitable for AI techniques;
2. Identifying or developing, validating, and implementing the best selected AI techniques; and
3. Utilizing lifecycle-based, multi-criteria assessment methods in order to improve sustainability decision support in the Canadian egg industry.

Project outputs will include a Ph.D. dissertation, presentation of results at poultry industry association professional meetings, conference presentations, and submission of study results for publication in peer-reviewed venues.

This project will begin in September 2022.