Modelling Operational Decision-Making in Agriculture

Farm management practices differ considerably among farmers. In this article, we explore the processes which farmers go through when making operational decisions about technical interventions. Because farmers have different approaches to the decision-making process, it is essential to describe these differences to identify areas in which management skills require improvement. This study identifies and represents contextual, informational and inferential aspects of the cognitive work a farm manager performs in operational decision-making. We developed a conceptual modelling framework that structures the decision-making behaviour along a set of cognitive processes such as perception, interpretation, goal reasoning, planning and judgment. These processes are activated repeatedly throughout the production process. The framework can help characterize variation in management behaviour and performance, and identify promising directions for improvement

Ontological Foundation of Ecosystem Services and the Human Dimension of Agroecosystems

The purpose of this contribution is to lay down a preparatory groundwork for an ontology of ecosystem services in the setting of agroecosystems viewed as social-ecological systems. This ontology aims at defining a set of representational primitives with which to model agroecosystems, through the prism of ecosystem service flows to and from agriculture. It helps delineate between biophysical structures, processes, functions, and ecosystem services. On the human side of agroecosystems, the ontology includes a conceptualization of the behaviors that govern the management of ecosystem services at different levels. It strengthens the existing analytic basis of multidisciplinary research on ecosystem services in agroecosystems by prompting modelers to stick to a homogeneous dynamic-system decomposition of the target agroecosystem. Most importantly, it provides the conceptual link between biophysical research on ecosystem services and equally important considerations on cognitive and social aspects involved in agricultural and landscape-level décisions that aim at implementing agroecological principles

Representation et utilisation de meta-connaissances et d'informations imprecises ou incertaines

SIGLECNRS T Bordereau / INIST-CNRS - Institut de l'Information Scientifique et TechniqueFRFranc