Expert system shell, multipurpose land information systems for rural government

Rural communities currently experience pressure for effective management of environmental, social and economic resources. Land information is, however, often distributed among a variety of agencies, data formats and scales, making it difficult to integrate for local management and planning within fiscal and time constraints. Although geographic information systems have proliferated in recent years and publicly available digital data sources are becoming more common, use of much current technology remains beyond technical and financial capabilities of most rural communities. This project links GIS with database and regulatory data to form task-specific modules common to rural planning such as site plan review and watershed management. The system utilizes fuzzy logic and expert systems to dictate appropriate spatial processing tasks, to interpret GIS information, to report location-specific regulatory information and to interpret data quality for non-technical users. The results are turn-key systems for non-technical users, specialized for specific planning tasks. The research confirmed the technical and economic feasibility of utilizing an expert system shell to manage software for spatial land data processing and the need for such a system by rural communities.