What is it about?
The article proposes a“Digital Sentinel” framework that combines remote sensing, algal omics, and explainable artificial intelligence to predict harmful algal bloom risks before they contaminate water, seafood, aquaculture, irrigation systems, or food supply chains. Its central idea is to shift food-water safety from reactive testing after contamination to proactive prediction, using satellite monitoring for broad environmental signals and molecular tools to confirm toxic species and toxin-production potential.
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Why is it important?
Harmful algal blooms are presented as a growing food-water nexus threat because they can rapidly move from aquatic ecosystems into fisheries, aquaculture products, irrigation water, and ultimately human food exposure. The proposed system is important because it can support early-warning decisions, such as harvest-zone closures, water-treatment adjustments, food-processing changes, and regulatory interventions before unsafe products reach consumers. It also strengthens food authenticity and traceability by linking product origin claims with environmental risk maps and molecular fingerprints, helping detect seafood mislabeling or products falsely claimed to come from “clean” zones.
Perspectives
1. Scientific perspective The article integrates macro-scale evidence from satellites with micro-scale evidence from genomics, transcriptomics, and metabolomics, creating a more complete risk profile than either environmental imaging or lab testing alone. 2. Regulatory perspective Explainable AI is essential because regulators need transparent, auditable reasons behind risk scores before acting on closures, seizures, or safety alerts. 3. Food-industry perspective The framework helps companies move from costly recalls to planned prevention by giving advance warning of contamination risks affecting harvesting, processing, water treatment, and supply-chain movement. 4. One Health perspective The Digital Sentinel reflects the One Health model by connecting ecosystem health, water safety, food integrity, and human health into one predictive surveillance system.
Independent Researcher & Consultant Mostafa Essam Eissa
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: THE DIGITAL SENTINEL: REVIEW ON FO, RS AND AI FOR PROACTIVE FOOD-WATER NEXUS RISK, Quantum Journal of Engineering Science and Technology, December 2025, Quantum Academic Publisher Enterprise,
DOI: 10.55197/qjoest.v6i4.269.
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