170,830 research outputs found

    Developing a forest data portal to support multi-scale decision making

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    Forests play a pivotal role in timber production, maintenance and development of biodiversity and in carbon sequestration and storage in the context of the Kyoto Protocol. Policy makers and forest experts therefore require reliable information on forest extent, type and change for management, planning and modeling purposes. It is becoming increasingly clear that such forest information is frequently inconsistent and unharmonised between countries and continents. This research paper presents a forest information portal that has been developed in line with the GEOSS and INSPIRE frameworks. The web portal provides access to forest resources data at a variety of spatial scales, from global through to regional and local, as well as providing analytical capabilities for monitoring and validating forest change. The system also allows for the utilisation of forest data and processing services within other thematic areas. The web portal has been developed using open standards to facilitate accessibility, interoperability and data transfer

    Agricultural information dissemination using ICTs: a review and analysis of information dissemination models in China

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    Open Access funded by China Agricultural UniversityOver the last three decades, China’s agriculture sector has been transformed from the traditional to modern practice through the effective deployment of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Information processing and dissemination have played a critical role in this transformation process. Many studies in relation to agriculture information services have been conducted in China, but few of them have attempted to provide a comprehensive review and analysis of different information dissemination models and their applications. This paper aims to review and identify the ICT based information dissemination models in China and to share the knowledge and experience in applying emerging ICTs in disseminating agriculture information to farmers and farm communities to improve productivity and economic, social and environmental sustainability. The paper reviews and analyzes the development stages of China’s agricultural information dissemination systems and different mechanisms for agricultural information service development and operations. Seven ICT-based information dissemination models are identified and discussed. Success cases are presented. The findings provide a useful direction for researchers and practitioners in developing future ICT based information dissemination systems. It is hoped that this paper will also help other developing countries to learn from China’s experience and best practice in their endeavor of applying emerging ICTs in agriculture information dissemination and knowledge transfer

    Managing a portal of digital web resources by content syndication

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    As users become more accustomed to continuous Internet access, they will have less patience with the offering of disparate resources. A new generation of portals is being designed that aids users in navigating resource space and in processing the data they retrieved. Such portals offer added value by means of content syndication: the effort to have multiple, federated? resources co-operate in order to profit optimally from their synergy. A portal that offers these advantages, however, can only be of lasting value if it is sustainable. We sketch a way to set up and run an organisation that can manage a content syndication portal in a sustainable way.\ud \u

    Development of Grid e-Infrastructure in South-Eastern Europe

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    Over the period of 6 years and three phases, the SEE-GRID programme has established a strong regional human network in the area of distributed scientific computing and has set up a powerful regional Grid infrastructure. It attracted a number of user communities and applications from diverse fields from countries throughout the South-Eastern Europe. From the infrastructure point view, the first project phase has established a pilot Grid infrastructure with more than 20 resource centers in 11 countries. During the subsequent two phases of the project, the infrastructure has grown to currently 55 resource centers with more than 6600 CPUs and 750 TBs of disk storage, distributed in 16 participating countries. Inclusion of new resource centers to the existing infrastructure, as well as a support to new user communities, has demanded setup of regionally distributed core services, development of new monitoring and operational tools, and close collaboration of all partner institution in managing such a complex infrastructure. In this paper we give an overview of the development and current status of SEE-GRID regional infrastructure and describe its transition to the NGI-based Grid model in EGI, with the strong SEE regional collaboration.Comment: 22 pages, 12 figures, 4 table

    Embrapa Technological Information: a bridge between research and society

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    This paper presents the efforts undertaken by the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation regarding Science and Technology information management, through one of its Decentralized Units, Embrapa Technological Information (Scientific and Technological Information Service', SCT). The major aim of SCT is to promote and improve the processes of scientific communication - information that feeds and that results from research activities - and of science and technology dissemination - information that results from research activities and that is directed to the general publi
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