Food Safety Knowledge Exchange (FSKX) format: Current status and strategic development plans based on a SWOT analysis

Abstract

The Food Safety Knowledge Exchange (FSKX) format is a community-driven effort initially created to promote the efficient exchange of data and models in the food safety domain. Over the past years this effort was driven by the Risk Assessment Knowledge Integration Platform (RAKIP) Initiative that also provided a number of software tools and FSKX-compliant model files via their website https://foodrisklabs.bfr.bund.de/rakip-initiative/.

This paper describes the results of a SWOT analysis that was conducted to identify strategic avenues for enhancing FSKX's usability and adoption. The SWOT analysis identified a number of recommendations for the future evolution of FSKX. First, it is recommended to reduce the complexity of the annotation schema to ease the adoption of the format. Second, a clear distinction between the descriptive part of FSKX and the executable part is proposed. To promote the broad usage of FSKX-compliant models, it is also recommended to develop and provide FSKX-compliant APIs and resources that facilitate cloud-based execution.

As part of the research to prioritize future FSKX development options, we also considered the implications of the emerging generative AI technologies, particularly which impact large language models (LLMs) might have in supporting the adoption of FSKX by the research community. Recognizing the format's application potential beyond the food safety domain, we then proposed to re-brand the FSKX acronym as "FAIR Scientific Knowledge Exchange Format" which better reflects its broad applicability in various scientific domains. Our research findings suggest that with the implementation of the improvements identified by the SWOT analysis and the broader availability of generative AI technologies the broad adoption of FSKX as a method to share data and models in a FAIR way comes into reach.