# A Game Theoretic Framework for Surplus Food Distribution in Smart Cities and Beyond
## Conclusions  
Surplus food distribution is visibly not a long term solution for food wastage, and the issue has to be tackled at the roots by putting a check on the inclination of the society towards a permanent over-supply of food and a fear of running-out of food. Additionally, in the upcoming smart cities, apart from several other factors, proper transportation and storage infrastructures at different stages of food production have a great impacton the sources and the amount of food wasted. However, until the society structure, leading to a permanent over-hoarding and wastage of food, is fixed, ICT-based surplus food distribution systems will continue to bridge the gap between the over-supplied and the under-provided. In the upcoming smart cities, there is a vast opening in which ICT platforms, especially handheld device-based apps, can prove pivotal in facilitating a smoother food redistribution by percolating deep into the masses of both urban and rural locations. Although 100% of the food waste cannot be targeted by this approach, the 60% avoidable waste will be diverted from landfills to the under-provided people. The FDRM-CA mechanism, delivered by handheld device apps, provides a great platform for carrying this out specifically. It prevents donors from misreporting, addresses donor and receiver preferences properly, prioritizes food donation/requirement events chronologically, matches donors optimally with receivers and volunteers, and above all, achieves all this to provide agents with their respective assignments in real time, making it an attractive choice for the task. As receivers gradually broaden the spectrum of their requirements from the more common _freshly cooked_ and _packaged solid_ food types towards the statistically rarer _fresh produce_ and _frozen uncooked_ food types, and as donors are diversified from households to farmers and business people, this redistribution approach will be able to target the different stages of food production wherein food is wasted. With the use of double-sided market related game-theoretic algorithms for mapping, the preferences of all the parties can be addressed better, leading to a higher satisfaction of all the agents involved. This is guaranteed to attract more participation in the food redistribution network, eventually lowering the food wastage and hunger challenges of the world for a sustainable and scalable food future. In the future, if some volunteers find incentives as their primary motivation to participate in the system, the same can be integrated with the model for a hybrid functionality so as to attract a broader volunteer participation, leading to an overall better surplus movement. Conceptualization, S.S., V.K.S., F.X., B.S. and S.M. ; methodology, S.S., V.K.S., F.X., B.S. and S.M. ; validation, S.S., B.S. and S.M. ; formal analysis, S.S., V.K.S., B.S., F.X. and S.M. ; investigation, S.M. and F.X. ; writing--original draft preparation, S.S., V.K.S., F.X., B.S. and S.M. ; writing--review and editing, S.S., V.K.S., F.X. and S.M. ; supervision, F.X. and S.M. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. This research received no external funding. Not applicable. The data used in the simulation of the mechanism have been synthetically generated through Python libraries and the corresponding code is available in **GitHub** at [[https://github.com/Surja-Sanyal/Surplus-Food-Distribution-Simulation-2021-May.git](https://github.com/Surja-Sanyal/Surplus-Food-Distribution-Simulation-2021-May.git)]([https://github.com/Surja-Sanyal/Surplus-Food-Distribution-Simulation-2021-May.git](https://github.com/Surja-Sanyal/Surplus-Food-Distribution-Simulation-2021-May.git)), accessed on 4 May 2021. The code was also used to generate the simulation results and their corresponding graphs included in the paper. The parameters used, as stated in Section 4, are mentioned here as well. The authors declare no conflict of interest. The following abbreviations are used in this manuscript: