he China Vital Issues Process panel met on December 18, 1996, in Beijing, China, to establish the context for developing a decision support system for managing China's critical infrastructures. Panel members identified and achieved consensus on agricultural resource management issues. These issues are to be used to direct the structure of a state-of-the-art decision support system for assisting in the management of China's agricultural sector that is responsive to issues that are vital to sustainable development. (Panelists)

Goal

The panel developed the following goal statement:

Vital Issues

The panelists then agreed that the agricultural resource management issues were already identified. They concluded:

• The most urgent things to be resolved are:
  • At what level will this system be targeted – national, ministry, regional, provincial, county, or local
  • Agreement will be necessary between the inter-ministerial and the inter-sectoral levels about what the theme is, what the scope is, and the format of collaboration
  • Who will provide the data, and how and who will be selected as test sites

• Emphasis needs to be placed on the following areas and means to develop standards:
  • identify priority problems to be solved:
    • priority should be given to a local region where the system will find the most applications and be most easily transferred to other localities,
    • the technical framework of the system should be suitable for agricultural management, and
    • there should be an integration of concept and substance
  • establish the standards according to the consensus and principles agreed to by the Chinese priorities include:
    • deciding the content of this project based on whether the intended system is indeed needed for solving current problems,
    • data analysis,
    • data update and accuracy,
    • network configuration,
    • data and information sharing, and
    • availability of models

• Practical problems need to be solved by ensuring the development of models and multiple aspect standards, identifying the user categories and their specific needs, and developing sub-systems for each of the targeted users. There can be five categories of users:
  • provincial, regional, county, and some commodity agencies’ information centers,
  • researchers of relevant fields,
  • enterprises and businesses,
  • producers, and
  • central government

• The system should be servicing the related policies by realizing them through the project’s implementation.

For more information contact Dr. Dennis Engi, (505) 845-8284.