Building a Forestry DSS with ArcInfo 8: Issues and Opportunities

Author: David J. Buckley
Organization: Pacific Meridian Resources

2000 S. College Ave.
Fort Collins, CO 80525
USA

Phone: 970-490-5900
Fax: 970-490-2300
dbuckley@pacificmeridian.com

The advent of ArcInfo 8 affords many advantages in database and applications development. In particular, the migration to the Microsoft COM standard provides an extensible platform for building specific tools focused on business tasks. The requirements of a forestry decision support system based on business process modeling techniques are complex. They require an integrated spatial and tabular database architecture that accommodates the definition of business rules for geoprocessing activities such as inventory maintenance and harvest planning. ArcInfo 8 provides an integrated database model, the geodatabase, that could facilitate such requirements. However, many issues are involved in building a geodatabase that respects operational business rules for a distributed computing environment of regional offices.

While ArcInfo 8 is a new, unproven software, it is based on proven and standard technology. The opportunities for building object-based applications, organized into tool sets, are ideal for the nature of forestry DSS requirements. ArcMap provides an excellent starting point for the user interface that forces developers to reconsider the traditional application interface used for forestry systems.

This paper will review the experiences of designing and developing forestry DSSs using ArcInfo 8. A review of issues, concerns, advantages, and design alternatives will be presented. These focus on spatial database development and applications development. Examples will be presented that illustrate opportunities and achievements.