Spatial decision support systems use software tools to help humans make resource management decisions, often involving land or space use. They use technologies like GIS to provide guidance and evaluate multiple variables for the best solution. Agriculture is a popular use case, and a clear and easy-to-use interface is essential.
A spatial decision support system is a specific type of software tool that helps human users understand the best ways to implement spatial solutions. In general, decision support software helps humans make resource management decisions. For spatial decision support systems, these decisions often involve land or space use.
Experts describe spatial decision support systems (SDSS) as interactive systems that provide guidance by providing values for specific elements of a spatial environment. Those who use and observe these types of systems identify components of spatial decision support, such as intelligence, where systems obtain critical inputs applied to a spatial model. Practitioners may also refer to the concept of choice, where various available solutions are compared and contrasted in a spatial decision support system. High-level multi-criteria spatial decision support involves evaluating more than one variable applied to a map of a space, in order to find the best solution out of several available choices.
In many cases, spatial decision support systems help human managers with land use issues. One of the most popular and effective uses of spatial decision support is in agriculture. Agriculture is especially concerned with the particular uses of the land, whether for horticultural crops or for grazing livestock or other agricultural uses. By capturing data and modeling it into useful visuals, spatial decision support software can make a variety of choices much clearer to a human user.
In order to provide this type of decision assistance, software often uses specific technologies. One of them is Geographic Information Systems or GIS. GIS resources allow programmers to enter a variety of properties or data elements for a variety of geographic locations. These can be scattered around the world or limited to a very specific latitude and longitude. The use of GIS offers robust and effective spatial decision support tools.
Part of the essential task of building a spatial decision support system is to provide a clear and easy-to-use interface. The data underpinning the spatial decision support system needs to be robust, but without an easily understandable set of tools, the program may not be very useful. The best spatial decision support system models have simple tools for querying or markup, as well as color-coded results on a simple, easy-to-read map. Some inferior systems may have hidden or overly complex controls, an ill-defined map without good orientation information, or poor visual output for observing results.
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