| The purpose of this research was to study agricultural crop production decision support systems as a means of transferring agricultural technology from research labs and plots to producers, extension specialists, agriculture service agencies, and scientists, on the Western Canadian Prairies. A decision support system is a computer program that analyses problems spanning several knowledge or problem areas producing results that aid the management decision-making process. The primary objective was to develop a computer application program that would fulfill the farm manager's decision support needs and be “open” to future enhancements. This interdisciplinary study has a strong agricultural presence in the application context of the resultant computerized agricultural decision support system, with agronomics being the foundation on which the system was built, and computer science being the toolbox used to build it.; Farm Smart 2000 is the resultant decision support system, providing “single-window” access to three different tiers of decision support utilizing the Internet, expert systems and integrated multiple heterogeneous reusable agents in a cooperative problem-solving environment. An expert system is a computer program that solves complicated problems, within a specific knowledge or problem area, that would otherwise require human expertise. Expert systems integrated with each other within a decision support system are called agents. Reusable agents are modular computer programs (e.g. expert systems) which can be used in more than one computer application with little or no modification. Farm Smart 2000 provides support for most management aspects of crop production including variety selection, crop rotations, weed management, disease management, residue management, harvesting, soil conservation, and economics, for the crops of wheat, canola, barley, peas, and flax.; Tier-3, the most sophisticated level of Farm Smart 2000, is the focus of this dissertation and utilizes multiple reusable agents, integrating them such that they cooperate together to solve complex interrelated crop production problems. A Global Control Expert achieves the required communication and coordination among the agents resulting in an “open system”, enabling Farm Smart 2000 to extend its problem-solving capabilities by integrating additional agents and knowledge, without system re-engineering, thereby remaining an ongoing technology transfer vehicle. |
