Multi-Attribute Modelling of Economic and Ecological Impacts of Cropping Systems

Modelling of economic and ecological impacts of genetically modified crops is a demanding task. We present some preliminary attempts made for the purpose of the ECOGEN project “Soil ecological and economic evaluation of genetically modified crops”. One of the goals of the project is to develop a computer-based decision support system for the assessment of economic and ecological impacts of using genetically modified crops, with special emphasis on soil biology and ecology. The decision support system will be based on a rule-based model incorporating both economic and ecological criteria. In this paper we present some preliminary results of developing the integral model and describe four specific sub-models. The first two sub-models are concerned with ecology and assess the ecological impacts of various types of weed and pest control, respectively. The other two sub-models assess the economic impacts of cropping systems at the farm and regional level, respectively. All the models were developed using a qualitative multi-attribute modelling methodology, supported by the software tool DEXi.