| Difficulties encountered during planning of rural development projects reduce the chances for successful implementation. Decades of experience with planning support to developing countries suggest that macro- and micro- planning alone are not enough. Managerial support and internalization of improved analytical capabilities and economic management techniques are critical to greater effectiveness in resource use and higher rewards in development efforts.;This dissertation provides a vision of computer-aided expert decision support systems as a vehicle for delivering information for planning rural development projects. Such a system can be built with the flexibility necessary to capture the characteristics (political and human factors, uncertainties to the decision making environment, shortages of data and skilled manpower, and communication gaps) of rural development.;In describing this vision, the dissertation examines a specific case in Kenya of the Rural Trade and Promotion Centers (RTPC), where infrastructure investments are expected to promote growth and development in rural towns. The dissertation describes implementation of a computer-aided expert decision support system to support planners and administrators in performing their responsibilities under the RTPC program. The computer-aided system described in the dissertation integrates an expert system with a general equilibrium social accounting matrix, a numeric index, a database system and an interactive user-interface to create a comprehensive decision aid. Specifically, the computer-aided expert decision support system provides planners and administrators with a mechanism for obtaining knowledge of the dynamic nature of rural development to use as a basis for their decisions, and in doing so, help formalize their thinking about alternative development projects. |
