Peter Knopp

NED-2: an agent-based decision support system for forest ecosystem management

Abstract Decision making for forest ecosystem management can include the use of a wide variety of modeling tools. These tools include vegetation growth models, wildlife models, silvicultural models, GIS, and visualization tools. NED-2 is a robust, intelligent, goal-driven decision support system that integrates tools in each of these categories. NED-2 uses a blackboard architecture and a set of semi-autonomous agents to manage these tools for the user. The blackboard integrates a Microsoft Access database and Prolog clauses, and the agents are implemented in Prolog. A graphical user interface written in Visual C++ provides powerful inventory analysis tools, dialogs for selecting timber, water, ecological, wildlife, and visual goals, and dialogs for defining treatments and building prescriptive management plans. Users can simulate management plans and perform goal analysis on different views of the management unit, where a view is determined by a management plan and a point in time. Prolog agents use growth and yield models to simulate management plans, perform goal analyses on user-specified views of the management unit, display results of plan simulation using GIS tools, and generate hypertext documents containing the results of such analysis. Individual agents use metaknowledge to set up and run external simulation models, to load rule-based models and perform inference, to set up and execute external GIS and visualization systems, and to generate hypertext reports as needed, relieving the user from performing all these tasks.

NED-2 User's Guide

This is the users guide for NED-2, which is the latest version of NED, a forest ecosystem management decision support system. This software is part of a family of software products intended to help resource managers develop goals, assess current and future conditions, and produce sustainable management plans for forest properties. Designed for stand-alone Windows-based personal computers, NED-2 integrates a variety of forest management tools into a single environment. These tools include databases, growth and yield models, wildlife models, geographic information systems (GIS), visualization tools, and others. This users guide provides guidance for use of the software and a basic introduction to the principles and calculations used in NED-2. A reference guide with more detailed explanations of the models, equations, and rules that underlie the software is available separately http://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/40931/. The NED-2 software and related documentation may be downloaded from http://nrs.fs.fed.us/tools/ned/products/ned2/.

PROLOG/RDBMS Integration in the NED Intelligent Information System

NED-2 is a software system in development by the USDA Forest Service to facilitate ecosystem management. Using PROLOG knowledge bases and inference engines, NED-2 evaluates forest inventories to determine the degree to which they satisfy a set of predefined goals. By integrating third-party simulation and visualization packages, NED-2 allows the user to plan, predict, and assess forest treatment scenarios.

NED-2 reference guide

This is the reference guide for NED-2, which is the latest version of NED, a forest ecosystem management decision support system. This software is part of a family of software products intended to help resource managers develop goals, assess current and future conditions, and produce sustainable management plans for forest properties. Designed for stand-alone Windows-based personal computers, NED-2 integrates a variety of forest management tools into a single environment. These tools include databases, growth and yield models, wildlife models, geographic information systems (GIS), visualization tools, and others. The software is distributed with an online help system and a users guide http://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/39537/. This reference guide provides more detailed explanations of the models, equations, and rules that underlie the software. NED-2 software can be downloaded from http://nrs.fs.fed.us/tools/ned/products/ned2/.

The NED IIS Project - Forest Ecosystem Management

For many years we have held to the notion that an Intelligent Information System (IIS) is composed of a unified knowledge base, database, and model base. The main idea behind this notion is the transparent processing of user queries. The system is responsible for “deciding” which information sources to access in order to fulfil a query regardless of whether this involves a data retrieval, an inference, a computational method, a problem solving module, or some combination of these. The NED IIS project is an effort to develop a robust, intelligent, goal-driven forest ecosystem management system to help forest managers plan and achieve wildlife, ecological, water, landscape, and timber goals. NED, using a blackboard architecture dominated by semi autonomous intelligent agents, integrates a core database, domain knowledge, meta-knowledge, and a GUI with external (possibly distributed) legacy and special purpose (heterogeneous) information sources. The current version of NED is NED-2. NED-2 is still under construction, however a prototype incorporating the major components of the architecture has been completed and demonstrated.

Stewplan: software for creating forest stewardship plans (Version 1.3)

Describes the purpose and function of the Stewplan computer program. Provides instructions for loading Stewplan, a tutorial for getting started, and instructions for use. A copy of the program is included. [Users manual; CD-ROM].

NEDLite user's manual: forest inventory for Palm OS handheld computers

A users manual for NEDLite, software that enables collection of forest inventory data on Palm OS handheld computers, with the option of transferring data into NED software for analysis and subsequent prescription development. NEDLite software is included. Download the NEDLite software at: http://www.fs.fed.us/ne/burlington/ned