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Multi-scaling Agroclimatic Classification for Decision Support Towards Sustainable Production

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Multicriteria Analysis in Agriculture

Part of the book series: Multiple Criteria Decision Making ((MCDM))

Abstract

Agriculture is highly affected by environmental conditions and the assessment of the agroclimatic potential is necessary for sustainability and productivity. The climate is among the most important factors that determine the agricultural potentialities of a region and the suitability of a region for a specific crop, whereas the yield is determined by weather conditions. In this chapter the first objective is to identify sustainable production zones in Thessaly by conducting contemporary agroclimatic classification based on remote sensing and GIS. The agroclimatic conditions of agricultural areas have to be assessed in order to achieve sustainable and efficient use of natural resources in combination with production optimization. Thus, a quantitative understanding of the climate of a region is essential for developing improved farming systems. The second objective derives from the first; it develops a decision support system (DSS) by using multi-criteria analysis combining different criteria to a utility function under a set of constraints concerning different categories of agroclimatic, social, cultural and economic conditions and so we can achieve an optimum agricultural production plan. In order to support the realization of the proposed production zoning and DSS in real-time, a Sensor Web service platform is proposed to be implemented based on the Sensor Web technologies, which extracts Real-time environmental and agronomic data.

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Acknowledgements

The conventional meteorological data was provided by the National Meteorological Service. The satellite data was provided by NASA-NOAA from the USA. The rainfall maps were provided by EU-JRC at Ispra-Varese, Italy. The technical and economic coefficients of crops in each Prefecture resulted from the Regional Authority of Thessaly and from the Department of Agriculture and Veterinary of each Prefecture. Additional data have been provided by the Department of Agricultural Economics of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and from the National Agricultural Research Foundation (NAGREF—National Agricultural Research Foundation, n.d.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, University of Thessaly, Volos, Greece

    Nicolas R. Dalezios & Kostas Mitrakopoulos

  2. Department of Agricultural Economics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Basil Manos

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  1. Nicolas R. Dalezios
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  2. Kostas Mitrakopoulos
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  3. Basil Manos
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Cordoba, Cordoba, Spain

    Julio Berbel

  2. Department of Agricultural Economics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Thomas Bournaris

  3. Department of Agricultural Economics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Basil Manos

  4. Decision Support Systems Laboratory, Technical University of Crete, Chania, Greece

    Nikolaos Matsatsinis

  5. Department of Agricultural and Food Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Davide Viaggi

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Dalezios, N.R., Mitrakopoulos, K., Manos, B. (2018). Multi-scaling Agroclimatic Classification for Decision Support Towards Sustainable Production. In: Berbel, J., Bournaris, T., Manos, B., Matsatsinis, N., Viaggi, D. (eds) Multicriteria Analysis in Agriculture. Multiple Criteria Decision Making. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76929-5_1

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