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Role of Expert System in Natural Resources Management
2. Management of Natural Resources:
The economic growth of a region depends upon the proper exploitation of
its natural resources. The resources like land; water, minerals, forests, fisheries and
livestock are the natural gift and are transformable into tangible wealth on exploitation to
produce agricultural, industrial and energy outputs. These are the most significant
ingredients for stimulating the economic growth of the region.(fig.). The economic
planning for a region or state or nation needs detail information of various items of
natural resources. It is a fact that lot of data related to natural resources, already exists in
scattered form at many places in government departments and in their files and are not
easily available in a consolidated form when needed by planners. For the proper
utilization, equitable distribution and optimal management of natural resources the most
needed are an inventory of resources, present day utilization levels, or future utilization
possibilities. Therefore, attempts are required to produce data from concerned sources in
the standardized formats and put in an appropriate database. The set of activities related
to data management on natural resources, such as data generation, data collection,
compilation, storage, retrieval and processing are mutually interacting and inter-dependent
which naturally open option for management as a system. In this connection
the Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India has launched the pilot project
called as the Natural Resource Database Management System (NRDMS) [4], with
following objectives:
- To evolve appropriate methodology for collection, collation, storage and
processing of data on natural resources in a given region in totality.
- To evolve standardized format in which natural resources and socio-economic
data could be presented in an integrated manner to establish
linkage among various hierarchical units.
Figure 1. Components of Natural Resources
- To make assessment of natural resources of the areas under study.
- To make utilization of the information for the purpose of planning and
development.
The significant developments in the field of electronics, computer science,
artificial intelligence, communication, space-technology, availability of variety of sensors
and platforms, remote sensing techniques and data processing techniques enable
collection, analysis and interpretation of data with multi-objective approach at highly
minimized cost. These data are being processed using modern computational techniques
to provide the most up to date and useful information. The advancements in the
information technology have made the area of natural resources management information rich. Information is coming in volumes and can be obtained by various means such as
maps in conventional and digital form, aerial photographs surveys or experimental data,
remotely sensed images and other forms of transmitted signal. Information is dynamic
with intermittent or continuous changes in space and time and its enormous volume
makes their handling very tough task for personnel associated with natural resources
management without aid of modern data management system. In order to control flood of
such information the application of knowledge and expertise related to natural resources
is essential and will be helpful in streamlining, analyzing, managing, digesting,
visualizing and integrating information in an efficient and affective manner. The inter-play
[5] of knowledge and information shown in fig.1 makes the role of information
technology more appropriate in intelligent decision-making. It is very straightforward to
accept that intelligent decision can't be taken without use of relevant knowledge. The role
of knowledge and information is complementary in the intelligent decision-making.
Figure 1. Role of knowledge and information in decision making process
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