Development of a first-generation Food Cloud for data, tools and services related to the nutrition, health and agri-food sciences–contributions from UCD to the Food Nutrition Security Cloud (FNS-Cloud) project

Existing data, tools and services in the nutrition, health and agri-food domains are fragmented and lack critical mass. FNS-Cloud aims to federate existing and emerging tools and datasets in addition to developing new services into a single ‘ Cloud ’ to support their re-use. Work undertaken by UCD comprises 3 objectives, to develop: i) a framework for mapping dietary intake data; ii) a quality assessment framework; iii) novel dietary intake tool for use in diverse populations. A framework to support the mapping of data from differing FFQs is required to facilitate re-use of data and enable merging of datasets. A framework mapping existing FFQs was created. Individual foods, food groups and frequency of consumption categories were mapped by visually aligning similar options and creating harmonized groupings for those that didn ’ t align. The feasibility of this mapping system was tested through a comparison exercise using data derived from Food4Me (1) and NHANES (2) . A quality assessment framework is needed in FNS-Cloud to support researchers in the decision- making process to assess whether data is fi t for the intended purpose and maintain scienti fi c quality. Markers of quality were identi fi ed within literature considering data collection, data management and data analysis. Foodbook24 is a web-based dietary assessment tool originally developed for use in the Irish adult population (3) . The tool has been further developed to enable use among diverse ethnic groups; speci fi cally Brazilian, Chinese and Polish. A sub-sample of baseline Food4Me data (N = 210) was