Welfare and mortality in pig herds are major challenges for the Danish pig industry. Today, the existing methods and tools to support farmers in monitoring growing pigs have been insufficient to ensure proper action. More advanced ICT methods and tools are needed for optimal decision making to improve animal welfare and productivity. The alliance will build a sustainable top-level research environment with the aim to integrate ICT in the entire production process at herd level through improved methods for automatic monitoring, process optimisation and advanced operations research methods for decision support in growing pigs. The alliance is a cooperation of leading herd management and animal welfare scientists at the two Danish universities: Copenhagen University and Aarhus University, dealing with animal production and welfare. The alliance is further strengthened through international collaboration with leading experts in the fields and involvement of statisticians, computer scientists and economists from other research institutes as well as main players in the pig industry.
