Author(s): L. H. Anh; M. B. Abbott; Delft Hydraulics
Linked Author(s):
Keywords: Organic farming; Aquaculture; Health-care provision; Water sector; Hydroinformatics
Abstract: Organic farming and aquaculture, as well as low-cost indigenous health-care provision, can greatly reduce the need for hydraulic infrastructure, agrochemicals, mechanization and industrial pharmaceutics, but then at the cost of a much enhanced flow of reliable, relevant and timely information and the installation of such knowledge as is necessary to process this information into sound decisions. This cost can be greatly reduced by processing information flows through knowledge into the form of advice, so as to provide advice-serving systems. It can also be realised most generally by centring this processing around the water component in all the applications involved, water being, so to say, ‘the lowest common denominator' in all applications. In order that such systems can truly benefit the general population, they must also however be for the most part customised for each and every farmer, aquaculturist and health-care application, and this is only possible economically when means are developed to mass-customise the advice-serving system by automating its operations. This in turn now becomes feasible due to advances in telecommunications technologies and their enabling software developments. The present paper introduces the rationale of mass-customisation of advice-serving systems in the water sector generally, which is the sector that is the most susceptible to improvement by these means. In conclusion, the development described here is related to supporting developments introduced in other papers submitted to this Congress.
Year: 2003