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overview
Name:
PMM-Lab
Company / Institution:
Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, Germany
Development Partners:
Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, Germany
Contact person:
Matthias Filter
Link:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/pmmlab
Designed for:
Food business operators
Researchers
Government
Teachers
Students
Applicable for:
Database (associated with simulation)
Growth module (simulation and fitting)
Inactivation module (simulation and fitting)
Media covered:
Any
Microorganisms covered:
Any
Growth Factors covered:
Any
Modeling approach:
Deterministic
Description:
The prediction of growth and inactivation of microorganisms in food matrices is a field of intensive research with increasing relevance to food safety professionals and public authorities. Today, large quantities of experimental and quality control data are available in comprehensive public or proprietary databases. In parallel the mathematical foundation for the generation of predictive microbial models has been developed and is available. Nevertheless there is a gap in easy-to-use, free and transparent software solutions that enable e.g. food safety professionals to apply state-of-the art mathematical modeling concepts to their proprietary data and additionally provide a solution to the issue of integrated data and model management.
The software PMM-Lab has been specifically designed to address this gap. It is outlined right from the beginning as community resource to allow broad application and joint development. PMM-Lab already provides many valuable data analysis and modeling features including modules to create, visualize, analyze, save, import, export and deploy predictive microbial models based on experimental data. Moreover, it allows consistent data management for the analyzed experimental data and generated models due to the integrated database. Technically, PMM-Lab is an extension to the open-source data integration and analysis platform KNIME (www.knime.org) from which it inherits highly beneficial properties like modularity, flexibility, scalability and extensibility. PMM-Lab is designed to be used by laboratory scientists, food safety specialists or even modeling experts who wish to distribute their methods to a broad community. Also users trying to answer fundamental research questions based on experimental data collections or looking for structure in their growing data and model collection will find value in this software. Possible application areas are numerous including prediction of shelf life and food spoilage. PMM-Lab has been developed by the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, Germany and is freely available at https://sourceforge.net/projects/pmmlab/ under the GNU public license.
The attached slides give you an overview on the background and motivation for PMM-Lab development.