Click on “Download PDF” for the PDF version or on the title for the HTML version. If you are not an ASABE member or if your employer has not arranged for access to the full-text, Click here for options. Expert System Modeling of Liquid Manure Management for Integrated Decision Support System of Swine Manure ManagementPublished by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, St. Joseph, Michigan www.asabe.org Citation: Paper number MBSK 06-107, ASABE/CSBE North Central Intersectional Meeting . (doi: 10.13031/2013.22358) @2006Authors: Subrata Karmakar, Michael Nketia, Joy Agnew, Claude Lague, Hubert Landry Keywords: Manure management, systems engineering approach, decision support system, decision criteria Livestock producers are faced with different manure management options that may be implemented into their operations. Given the expansion of the livestock industry, the implementation of environmental regulations, and the increasing importance of social and health issues, the selection of optimal manure management systems is becoming a strategically important task. Increasingly, integrated decision support systems (DSS) are becoming necessary to assist decision makers in their evaluation of different manure management alternatives, like, liquid system, semi-solid system, solid system and bio-gas or bio-energy system based on combinations of different manure management sub-systems (collection, storage and application). To address this situation, a user-friendly computer program called Integrated Swine Manure Management (ISMM) is being developed for the Canadian Prairie provinces. Decision criteria including environmental, agronomic, social and health, greenhouse gas emission, and economic factors have been considered for the selection, design, and operation of the DSS. The expert system modeling is based on Visual Basic programming. Decision on adopting a particular combination of systems components is based on performance rating of the overall system. The program is interactive so that weighing factors for the different decision criteria can be varied to suit site-specific considerations. In this paper, the systems approach for choosing between different sub-systems (collection, storage and application) of a liquid manure management system is discussed. Using a case study, sensitivity analysis of different combinations of management components is also reported for systems performance. The decision software compared satisfactorily with other available DSS package. (Download PDF) (Export to EndNotes)
|