SUMATRA

Project title/name: The Forest Land Oriented Resource Envisioning System - FLORES

Country : Indonesia

Project location within the country: Rantaupandan and Bukittinggi, Sumatra/FONT>

100,000 US$

Short project description: The formulation and construction of a decision support system for exploring land use options in forested landscapes which is designed to make existing information more accessible, facilitate hypotheses testing, and foster collaboration between researchers working on these issues.

Description of the research programme: The Company’s research services fall within the wider remit of FLORES to develop a simulator model to support decision making. The forest simulator is analogous to the computer game "SimCity", but with the cityscape replaced with a landscape of forest and non-forest land. Its menu includes a range of options to manipulate the forest and land use patterns, and performance indicators include biodiversity and rural poverty. At present the forest simulator has a strong factual basis in Sumatra but it will be customised to suit different situations. It enables users to:-

• synthesise existing knowledge and identify gaps and other deficiencies;
• express present knowledge concisely, completely, explicitly and unambiguously as a model;
• create a framework to promote collaborative interdisciplinary research;
• provide a basis for strong empirical tests of hypotheses relating to land use policy;
• create a planning tool to allow planners and policy makers to explore future scenarios; and
• provide an educational game to improve general knowledge of tropical forest environments.

Donor: CIFOR/DFID

Department: CIFOR, Bogor Barai

Client: CIFOR, Bogor Barai

1

Title of consulting services provided: Facilitation of the FLORES modelling workshop.

Description of services provided: The Company has facilitated a workshop of more than 50 scientists and land-use specialists to develop the first prototype of the FLORES forest simulator model. The Holling Adaptive Environmental Management system was adapted by the Company's Consultant for this task. Working with the FLORES organisers over a three-week period, he arranged a series of plenary, modelling and demonstration sessions to guide participants through an 11-step model formulation programme which was designed to capture the information and understanding represented in all participants attending the workshop. Various adaptations to standard methodology used at smaller workshops were devised and these have been published together with the prototype model on the FLORES website.

Staff provided: Dr M.G. Murray (Workshop Facilitator and Ecologist).

January 1999

February 1999

10,000 US$