Development of a spatial decision support framework for IMPETUS project in West Africa

Abstract

Spatial Decision Support Systems (SDSS) need to be interdisciplinary and highly related to the target group. Developing systems for different persons in government, university and rural areas in developing regions seems to be impossible, if requirements in scientific reliability with the use of complex models are taken into account. The SMILE FRAMEWORK tries to meet these demands balancing the different, in parts contradictory, requirements. Therefore this java® based software tries to ensure a good adaptability, simple maintenance, wide capacity of integration of different models and tools, highly efficient development of the SDSS and over all the possibility for developers and scientific users to concentrate on the content of their work instead of getting perfect knowledge in programming languages. Within the IMPETUS project there are 30 Systems developed with and within the SMILE FRAMEWORK. The range of disciplines included in this integrated decision support framework (ISDSS) varies from climate models such as the weather-generator, integrated hydrological models to socioeconomic systems. Target groups for the systems are governmental, scientific and non governmental organizations within Benin and Morocco. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009.