A Web-based Agricultural Decision Support System on Crop Growth Monitoring and Food Security Strategies

Food shortage has been among the most threatening problems to the world since the beginning of the new century. And it means more to the countries with a large amount of citizens such as China. Chinese governments at different levels have being taken different kinds of actions to stabilize and increase the yields of grains. A major premise of making right decisions is the ability to accurately assess crop growth and food supply, and an scientific decision-making process to provide appropriate strategies or countermeasures based on them. This can be accomplished partly by using the decision support system (DSS) that provide accurate and detailed information about crop growth and food supply. In this paper, an agricultural spatial DSS (ADSS) frame was studied and developed to meet the increasing demands. The ADSS was aimed at suggesting efficient strategies for problems in crop growth and food safety as well as providing timely and accurate information about crop growth and food supply. The system, based on the spatial information technologies and crop growth simulation methods, contains three parts: (1) a spatial agricultural resources data warehouse has been constructed; (2) a crops monitoring and simulation package was studied and developed; (3) a spatial decision support package for food-supply security developed. The ADSS has been applied to the Northeast China and been proven to be a successful tool for crop growth monitoring and food security strategies.