Generic Multiple-Criteria Framework for the development of agricultural DSS

Abstract

Implementation problems in the agricultural Decision Support Systems (agDSSs) have mostly been associated with non-involvement of the stakeholders in the development process. Although relevance and role of participatory approach and social learning for the successful development of agDSS are commonly found in the literature, the applications of these methods in the modern DSSs are mostly non-existing. Besides, due to multiple reasons behind agDSS rejection, various approaches and strategies were proposed to improve their adoption. However, developers often use their own strategies, criteria and priorities during various developmental phases, mainly due to the complex and vague nature of interactions between multiple factors describing DSS viz-a-viz non-availability of unified success criteria and their characterisation or ranking. Therefore, this research presents a generic multiple-criteria framework considering peculiarities of the DSS development environment characterised by Critical Success Factors (CSFs). The identified CSFs were evaluated and prioritised to measure their relative importance under generic DSS development settings in order to equip the developers with confident multiple decision choices. The proposed multi-criteria framework was used to develop DSS for Integrated Pest Management of apple to demonstrate its practical suitability.

Keywords:

• Critical Success Factors (CSFs)
• Decision Support Systems (DSS)
• DSS issues
• DSS framework
• participatory approach
• problem of implementation
• DSS success criteria

Acknowledgement

The authors are very grateful to renowned DSS practitioners, DSSAT users, and those who provide their valuable time for evaluation and feedback.

Notes

1. Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT) is software application programme that comprises crop simulation models for over 42 crops. It has above 14000 users from 154 countries.