MIS - capabilities
The term 'information system' is a general term for a system that facilitates access to information; however, a ' management information system' refers to integrated data sources and information systems, which meet the particular needs and requirements of planning and decision-making. In an ideal case, the major objectives of MIS are to:
- reach an understanding of the relevant processes on the basis of the available historic information. This element forms the basis for the development of models, required for forecasting and simulation.
- provide information on the current situation, especially for early warning purposes, for instance related to issues impacting on food security, water resources or pest and disease status.
- forecast changes and impacts, either natural or man-made , as an element in vulnerability assessments.
- forecast the consequences of policy decisions and measures before they are implemented in reality. This implies evaluating options for several given scenarios based on the possible results and predicted consequences, and selecting the most acceptable alternative.
Existing environmental information systems in ACP countries consist of isolated data sets (soil type, climate, land, water, forest and fisheries resources) and systems, aimed at management of specific resources: water, land or forest; they hardly reach the second objective mentioned above. The third and fourth objectives (forecasting changes and simulation) are currently almost only reached within one discipline mainly in meteorology (weather and climate forecast) and to a certain extent in oceanography. This is due to the fact that the ACP countries, in addition to operating within serious financial and human constraints, must grapple with inter-institutional competition (individuality of scientific disciplines and competition for resources), limited agreement on harmonized standards, formats or quality assurance and legal constraints (lack of common data policy).
The following table provides an overview of different phases of data/information systems.
CATEGORY | ELEMENTS | USAGE |
environmental information systems | traditional knowledge | oral transmission and exchange |
manuscript/printed archives | documents in files and folders | visual inspection and analysis |
isolated digital data archives | databases, spreadsheets using different standards and formats | computer-aided review and synthesis |
coordinated digital data archives | databases and spreadsheets, using common standards and formats, user interface | automatic review and synthesis |
GIS (Geographic Information System) | databases and data layers with common (geographic) reference, user interface | integrated analysis |
MIS (Management Information System) | databases, models, user interface | integrated analysis, extrapolation, forecast, simulation |
DSS (Decision Support System) | databases, models, artificial intelligence, user interface | integrated analysis, extrapolation, forecast, simulation, weighted ?advice? |
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