FoodBridge: AI-Assisted Food Donation Management with Secure OTP Verification and Real-Time Tracking

Abstract

Introduction

FoodBridge is a technology-based platform designed to address two major social problems: food waste and hunger. The system connects food donors, NGOs, delivery partners, and beneficiaries in one organized platform so that surplus food can reach people who need it quickly and safely.

The main problem identified is not simply a lack of food, but the absence of an efficient system for collecting, verifying, transporting, and distributing surplus food. Existing food donation systems often depend on manual coordination, which can cause delays, poor communication, food spoilage, and a lack of transparency.

FoodBridge aims to solve these issues through automation, artificial intelligence, secure verification, and real-time tracking. Its major features include:

• AI-based food freshness analysis to check whether donated food is safe and suitable for distribution.
• Automatic delivery-partner assignment based on distance, availability, and previous performance.
• OTP-based verification to securely confirm food pickup and handover.
• Real-time tracking using WebSockets, allowing donors and NGOs to monitor deliveries.
• A two-stage distribution model, where food first goes to NGOs and is then distributed to verified beneficiaries.
• Quality checking at the NGO level, allowing food to be classified as fresh, moderate, or spoiled.
• JWT authentication and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) to protect users and data.
• Dashboards, notifications, analytics, and audit logs to improve transparency and accountability.

Technology Used

The system follows a three-layer architecture:

• Frontend: AngularJS
• Backend: FastAPI
• Database: PostgreSQL

The platform is divided into modules for authentication, donation management, NGO operations, delivery management, AI processing, tracking, notifications, and beneficiary management.

Literature Survey

Previous food donation systems have helped connect donors with charities, but many lack real-time tracking, automated delivery assignment, food-quality verification, stakeholder integration, and secure handover mechanisms. FoodBridge attempts to overcome these limitations by combining AI, automation, real-time communication, and secure verification in one system.

Results

Testing with donors, NGOs, and delivery partners showed that FoodBridge can improve coordination, response time, transparency, and delivery efficiency. AI-based freshness checking helps prevent unsafe food from being distributed, while automated delivery assignment and real-time tracking help reduce delays and food wastage.

Future Scope

The system could be further improved through:

1. More advanced AI for freshness prediction and demand forecasting.
2. Route optimization using traffic and map data.
3. More detailed real-time tracking.
4. Better beneficiary identification and prioritization.
5. Development of a dedicated mobile application.
6. Stronger security and tamper-resistant records.
7. Advanced analytics and reporting.

Conclusion

The FoodBridge system is made to solve the problems of food waste and hunger. It does this by giving an technology-driven way for people to donate and distribute food. The system brings together people who want to donate food, non-governmental organizations and delivery partners on one platform. This makes it easier for them to work together and reduces delays in getting food to people who need it. The new and improved version of FoodBridge has advanced features that make the system work better and more reliably. It uses an analysis to check how fresh the food is so only good food is given out. The system also picks the delivery partner, which saves time and makes sure resources are used well. Additionally a special verification system makes sure that authorized people can pick up food and people can track their food in real time. FoodBridge also has a two-part system for giving out food. First food goes from donors to -governmental organizations and then it goes to people who need it after it has been checked for quality. The system uses technology like AngularJS, FastAPI and PostgreSQL and it has good security measures to keep data safe. Overall FoodBridge shows how artificial intelligence, automation and real-time communication can make food distribution systems work better. The platform reduces food waste. Helps people in need by getting surplus food to them quickly and reliably. If more people use FoodBridge and it gets even better it could make a difference, in how we manage food and support our communities. The FoodBridge system is a way to make sure that food gets to people who need it and it is an important part of solving the problems of food waste and hunger.

References

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Copyright

Copyright © 2026 Patil Sneha Sunil, Prof. Nirmala Shinge. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.