A design of spatial decision support system to enhance decision progress in agricultural actions

Agricultural actions usually involve a decision process collaborating different decision makers and officers. Different decision process may encounter different difficulties depending on the type of actions. In order to make efficient progress in actions, a support system for decision making should be constructed to include not only supporting information for the decision, but also tools for decision management. For such decision support and management system, enhancement in task communication, data summarizing and subtask management should be the focus of the development. In this study, we used MAKOCI (Multi-Agent Knowledge Oriented CyberInfrastructure) as a geospatial platform to convey customized decision knowledge, working procedures, and data processing capability, where ontology and multi-agent are implemented to facilitate modularized application design. A case study on detection and responses of agricultural heavy-metal contamination is given in this study to exemplify the functions of the decision support system designed. By the proposed design, the spatial decision support system facilitates hierarchical task definition and cross-government communications, in addition to supporting spatial and non-spatial decisional information. The decision progress can consequently be enhanced by monitoring, communication and management of actions among partaking users of the system.