In times of globalised food and feed trade, powerful integrative software tools are essential to solve foodborne crises quickly and reliably. The FoodChain-Lab web application (FCL Web; https://fcl-portal.bfr.berlin/) is such a tool. FCL Web is free and open-source software which helps to trace back and forward food along complex global supply chains during foodborne disease outbreaks or other food-related events. In the framework of One Health EJP COHESIVE, the efforts of several national and international tracing-related software projects are integrated within FCL Web to provide a modular tracing platform following the One Health approach. FCL Web unifies interactive tracing data visualisation, analysis as well as reporting - and in the future data collection - in one modular tracing platform (Fig. 1). The interactive analysis module was developed in a project with EFSA and offers automated visualisation of supply chains based on the needs of the user. A data table displays key information on involved food business operators and food items and includes comprehensive filter functions to analyse the information given in the table. The analysis module also helps to run simulations on hypothetical cross contamination or geographic clustering events during outbreaks via a scoring algorithm for deliveries and food business operators. A pilot version of a reporting module was integrated in FCL Web as well to display tracing, sample and case information in a format suitable for publishing tracing results in outbreak reports. A web-based tracing data collection mask offering a guided and structured data assessment with access to curated data was developed in a national project and will be integrated in FCL Web soon. Its multi-language design allows for potential European-wide use. In the future, more modules, e.g. to analyse genome sequencing data in the context of tracing are planned for FCL Web. With its features and its integrative approach, FCL Web blends seamlessly into a list of crucial tracing tool projects in Europe. In the future, these tools will be strongly interconnected to serve several tracing purposes on the local, national or European level. Hence, there is a need to improve interoperability of the tools e.g. via a universal data exchange format.

In spring 2017, the EFSA‐BfR Framework Partnership Agreement on Risk Assessment Tools for the Safety of Global Food and Feed Supply Chains was initiated. Tasks and deliverables in Area 1 were centred onFoodChain‐Lab (FCL) and include further development of FCL, applying it in foodborne outbreaks and propagating its use by conducting training workshops and establishing an international network of tracing experts. This final report summarises all activities in Area 1 that were accomplished during the first project phase of the EFSA‐BfR cooperation until summer 2019 and gives a short outlook on future collaborations. The first project phase was very successful. Three fruitful Member State (MS)‐specific FCL trainings were conducted. Furthermore a joint EFSA‐ECDC workshop was conducted with six MS and tracing as well as FCL was a major part in the training. Another multi‐country FCL training workshop took place in Germany and a third one in Italy for EFSA staff and MS experts. During several events and activities the network of tracing experts could be initiated and expanded. They expressed their interests in future FCL workshops and in collaborating in tracing issues and data exchange formats. FCL was applied in tracing analyses during several MS‐specific or multi‐country foodborne outbreaks, either via support by the FCL rapid deployment team or autonomously by the MS themselves. Furthermore, the development of FCL was pushed forward regarding the development of an FCL web application and interfaces with other software to exchange data. A key achievement was also the development of web‐based pilot versions of an input mask for delivery data and a visualisation to improve reporting of tracing information e.g. in EFSA Rapid Outbreak Assessments.Advancing the FCL web application and its data collection and reporting modules as well as strengthening the tracing expert network and improving the exchange of experience between EFSA, BfR and MS will all be in the focus during the second contract phase.

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Identifying a specific product causing a foodborne disease outbreak can be difficult, especially when dealing with a large amounts of suspicious food items and weak epidemiological evidence. A previously described likelihood model (Norström et al. 2015), improved within the OHEJP NOVA project, helps to prioritize food products that should be sampled for laboratory analysis. It is the aim of our study to integrate this approach into state of the art tracing software FoodChain-Lab (FCL; https://foodrisklabs.bfr.bund.de/foodchain-lab) developed at BfR to facilitate outbreak investigations. The model improved by Kausrud et al. in R (Ihaka and Gentleman 1996) uses wholesale data, the distribution of disease cases and census data to sort food items by their estimated likelihood to be the source of an outbreak. We developed a fast and secure intuitive software module using the Web Assembly technology (Haas et al. 2017) allowing professionals to embed the module easily into other applications. We integrated the module into the FCL web application for tracing (FCL Web; https://fcl-portal.bfr.berlin) to provide an intuitive and user-friendly solution. This solution combines a simple data input with extended data wrangling to make the calculation of the NOVA model as easy as possible. Since the model can be executed directly inside the web browser and therefore does not rely on any server environment, the possibility of data leakage can be highly reduced. The implementation of the advanced likelihood model into FCL Web increase the availability of this model and provides investigators easy, fast and reliable usage to improve outbreak investigation workflows.