Sharing app Olio to create real-time food poverty map for UK local authorities

Social enterprise Olio and the N/LAB centre for business analytics at the University of Nottingham are developing an interactive, data-driven tool to enable local authorities to find, track and predict areas of food poverty faster and more accurately.

The Food Poverty Map will leverage machine learning and real-time proprietary data from Olio, which is a free app that connects neighbours with each other and volunteers with local businesses so that surplus food can be given away rather than thrown away. It has 2.5 million users who have together shared 7 million portions of food.

“This solves a major problem for councils and local authorities currently fighting food poverty in their are...