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Submitted to: Agronomy Abstracts
Publication Type: Abstract Only Publication Acceptance Date: 10/31/1997 Publication Date: N/A Citation: N/A Interpretive Summary: Technical Abstract: Records of human activity on the farm are a multidimensional and highly stochastic streams of data. In a nonlinear world where small changes in input data and values can cause dramatic shifts in an output trajectory obtained from models, it is critically important to capture the human oriented farm management activity. The objectives of this research were to design a framework for farm records that would allow users to uniquely name, configure and produce statistics of their farming activity and allow definition and integration of decision-aid modules that provide additional views of the farm to the manager. We used the methods of aerospace systems and software engineering to develop the record's framework and a software product entitled FarmWin 97. The framework allows definition of farm inventory, farming operations, farm production records and parsing equations. Additions to the existing FarmWin system can be done in increased levels of sophistication. Simplest is to use the existing FarmWin 97 to define the necessary units, equations, inventory templates, operations and reports that define the decision aid. Next is creation of a software module that uses FarmWin records and produces additional databases or reports. Finally, the most complex method is to use the FarmWin DLL or OLE libraries to create a new application. Hopefully, this framework in collaboration with others will allow new views of the farm. |
