Natural Resource Informatics Model

Natural Resource Informatics

Assessment of natural resources is a must for planning any future plans of development with specific reference to agriculture. However most of time we have a static base data of natural resources which is revised after a gap of 5 years or so. However in between a lot of activities take place and we are unaware of its impact on total natural resource scenario. Further impact of any activitiy of use/exploitation is studied in isolation which does not take in account the impact of activities happening simultaneously. This raises some misconceptions resulting delay in nationally important projects. Sometime we are not able to anticipate some developments and it is difficult to quantify their impact on socio economic conditions. For example no one could imagine few years ago that coil drilling and solar power generation will become an important activity in Western Rajasthan. With these two activities, the livelihood options are going under sea change. We have no idea how it will impact agriculture in that area and what should be our research and development strategies to maintain agriculture an important livelihood option in the region. Similar thing happened in mineral rich districts of Odisha in 2002-2007 period when enhanced mining activities due to surge in demand due to Bejing Olympic 2008 lured people away from agriculture.

To address this problem, we need to develop Natural Resource Informatic model to study different factors affecting our natural resources. I have developed a tentative framework of such model which can be developed to provide a dynamic solution of our natural resource issues. The model should be developed for each sub agro ecological zone.