By Mary Andolina
A team of researchers at UW created a digital tool that will help Seattleites locate and monitor their local micropantries, also known as Little Free Pantries, in a collaborative and community-focused process. These completely free pantries or fridges are reliant on community donations and aim both to fight food insecurity and combat food waste.
The website, PantryMap, is an interactive map that displays local shelf and fridge pantries, allowing community members to rate the stock level of pantries from low to high, corresponding to only a few items to over 10 pounds worth of items. Researchers also installed real-time tracking sensors on four of the pantries, displaying live data on their website.
The goal of the project is to eliminate food waste for those with food to spare, reduce food insecurity for those in need, and encourage the overall exchange of food through the micropantry system, according to Giacomo Dalla Chiara, senior research scientist at UW’s Urban Freight Lab and visionary behind the project.
“The idea of the pantry and the pantrymap.org is to cut down that information barrier and geospatial barrier,” Dalla Chiara said.
Although there have been ways to track micropantries, such as community Facebook Groups and other websites, this project is unique in its use of sensors and live data, according to Dalla Chiara.
The sensors use weight and motion data to track how many items are currently in the pantry, according to Vikram Iyer, an assistant professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. Iyer, along with his doctoral student Vicente Arroyos, developed the sensors.
“We decided to build sensors that would measure the weight of the food on each shelf, as well as instrumenting the doors with sensors that would detect when it opened,” Iyer said. “So that way we would know how many times people came and opened the door [and] ideally took food.”
Iyer added that since the sensors track when people open the door, they can provide meaningful data on the public’s interactions with the pantries, even if they don’t end up picking up or donating any food.
Funded by a $700,000 Civic Innovation Challenge grant from the National Science Foundation, the pilot program was an interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers.
In addition to computer science experts, the creation of the website included engineering, public health, and food system researchers, Dalla Chiara said. He spoke to the collaboration between the research team and the greater Seattle community, something required by the civic innovation challenge grant they received.
Although the project was always grounded in community engagement, Dalla Chiara said the website grew out of a desire to create a helpful public tool out of the research they were gathering.
In addition to the website, food was collected by the company Ridwell and donated to the University District Food Bank. From there, donations were distributed among the pantries by the local bike club Pedaling Relief Project, researchers said.
Dalla Chiara explained that the website will continue to be live even after they finish collecting data in October. After that, he said it will be in the hands of the community to self-report and keep the website active.
“We brought in the communities, we created all those tools, and now, through them, we are kind of exploring how those different communities are using these tools,” Dalla Chiara said.