Summary
Prohibited promises of salvation and misleading, false promises, as well as the sale of dangerous or unauthorised products, pose safety risks for consumers in Austria. These risks pose a major challenge, especially in online retail, and are currently still insufficiently combated on the internet. The eMarketShield project aims to improve consumer safety in online retail. The focus is on the area of food supplements and goods that are subject to the Food Safety and Consumer Protection Act (LMSVG). The results are intended to contribute to market surveillance for all product categories sold online.
Project description
The eMarketShield project aims to develop and evaluate risk-based control approaches that are specially adapted to the requirements of market surveillance in online retail using a data-supported decision-making basis. The project builds on proven approaches to risk-based control in brick-and-mortar retail. For selected use cases in the area of food supplements, own approaches are implemented as part of the data collection and compared with existing solutions. In addition to crawling (capturing the structure and content of a website), scraping (reading out texts) and API access (interfaces between different systems), current artificial intelligence (AI) methods such as large language models (understanding natural language) are also used. In addition, special attention is paid to promoting Austria's digital sovereignty by developing and implementing these technologies and control approaches in a national context.
Benefits of the project
The findings of this project serve to identify potential weaknesses in internet market surveillance and provide solutions for optimising and increasing the efficiency of the process. The insights gained serve as a basis for the targeted selection of specific data sources and the development of strategies for crawling and scraping in order to make market surveillance effective and minimise potential risks for consumers.
Project details
Project title: Strengthening risk-based control and monitoring measures in online grocery retail using AI
Project acronym: eMarketShield
Project management: AGES, Priv.-Doz. Dr Christoph Rinner
Project partners: Federal Ministry of Social Affairs, Health, Care and Consumer Protection (BMSGPK), Austrian Institute for Applied Telecommunications (ÖIAT), FH OÖ Forschungs und Entwicklungs GmbH, LIqua Linzer Institut für qualitative Analysen, X-Net Services GmbH, Xylem Science and Technology Management GmbH
Funding: FFG KIRAS/K-PASS call for proposals 2024 - Cooperative R&D project - funding rate of 80%
Project duration: 10.2024 - 09.2026
Last updated: 14.11.2024
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