Tools
CIA Toolkit
CLIMEX / DYMEX
DREAM
DSSAT
EPIC
IMPACT
MarkSim
The Climate Information Analysis (CIA) Toolkit is a collection of three software utilities (CIA Mapping Tool, CIA Simulation Tool, and WeatherMan) designed to run DSSAT dynamic crop simulation models within a geo-spatial framework so that alternate input, management, or methodologies can be tested within the context of a spatial output system. HarvestChoice uses CIA Toolkit as a tool to automate regional crop model simulation runs over large area.
The assessment and management of agricultural risk centers on two major sources of annual variability; weather and the cost and prices of agricultural inputs and outputs. To address and quantify these risks, the Climate Information Analysis (CIA) Toolkit was developed by IFDC and University of Georgia. The CIA Toolkit is a fully functional GIS (Geographic Information System) linked with the CSM (Crop Simulation Model) crop models in DSSAT. When integrated with climate databases and coupled with a geospatial soil database, the system allows a wide range of crop management options to be simulated and analyzed. Together with an integrated seasonal analysis tool, crop management can be optimized based on both price/cost structures and climate. HarvestChoice works with the CIA Toolkit development team (Paul Wilkens in IFDC and Gerrit Hoogenboom in the University of Georgia) to customize the tool to generate a report of geo-referenced simulated crop growth responses based on user-defined baseline and scenarios of management/environmental changes at grid-based regional scale in sub-Saharan Africa.
Figure 1: Basemap of Crop Simulations in sub-Saharan Africa
The CSM dynamic simulation model is linked into a stand-alone GIS and allows a wide array of management options to be tested, including planting, fertilization (N, P and K), irrigation, and cultivar selection. The tool can utilize either historical data, or use stochastically generated datasets from long term means or monthly time series. Environmental modifications can be specified (within DSSAT compatible experimental files), or the output from GCM models (Hadley, ECHM4, etc.) can be used to drive the models. The seasonal analysis program is now tightly coupled to analyze sequentially all polygons and create an excel file which can be merged directly into the base map. The advantage is that given a range of input parameters, the system can, based on a set of prices, identify the optimal management scenario (profitability) for any supported crop.
Figure 2: Using GCM Scenarios to Drive the Model
The flexibility of the system permits an exceptional range of management options to be tested. The experimental file generation engine generates files required to run simulations and automates the simulation/analysis process. After running simulations (on a pixel basis), all outputs are analyzed simultaneously and merged into the map. Both the raw summarized data, and the optimal crop management, are produced. Segregation of historical weather into ENSO neutral, El niño, and La niña years, or other climate modifications, can produce different optimal management recommendations.
Figure 3: Mapping of Simulation Results
An integrated Visual Sensitivity Analysis Model permits the user to define and create custom scenarios for evaluation. All important management inputs (crop genetics, planting details, irrigation, climate, and fertilization) can be tested within this framework. An example might be 5 levels of nitrogen fertilizer with and without supplemental irrigation. The experimental file to run this scenario all across Africa is generated by the program, and the results analyzed and merged into the map. An additional level of analysis is created by comparing the outputs from two or more scenarios and mapping the relative change with a change in inputs or management.
The Climate Information Analysis Toolkit is a flexible tool for testing cropping system management in at-risk cropping areas around the world. Coupled with an extensive weather and soil database, the tool permits exploratory analysis on crop management options with a variety of inputs and objectives.
Contact Information
Paul Wilkens, IFDC
PO Box 2040, Muscle Shoals, AL 35662, USA
Email: pwilkens@ifdc.org 
These two programs are being used by HarvestChoice for pest, disease and weed spatial studies.
CLIMEX is a software program that estimates the potential geographical distribution and seasonal abundance of a species in relation to climate. Based on the assumption that if we know where a species lives we can infer what climatic conditions it can tolerate, CLIMEX attempts to mimic the biological mechanisms that limit species' geographical distribution and determine their seasonal phenology and relative abundance. HarvestChoice uses CLIMEX to estimate incidence and severance of biotic constraints, such as plant diseases, pests, and weeds, on crop production.
DYMEX is a software program that interactively builds and then runs population models in changing environments. The population models are structured around species' lifecycles, which in turn consist of the growth stages that individuals pass through during their life. A DYMEX lifecycle describes cohorts of individuals and the processes that affect the size, age and number of individuals in the cohort.
DREAM is an end user-oriented program designed to estimate the potential economic payoffs from the investment, generation, adoption and use of a specific intervention (often, but not necessarily, related to a new technology) that alters the productivity of producing any single agricultural commodity. DREAM allows for the definition of multiple sites of technology generation and use, differential rates of adoption and effectiveness across locations, and a number of pathways to realize economic impact. Impacts of productivity change on adopters and non-adopters, as well as on consumers, can be assessed through productivity consequences on production, prices, trade, consumption of a given agricultural product. But changes in quality and greater stability of production, as well as post-farm productivity changes can also be catered for. HarvestChoice will be using DREAM to assess the potential payoffs to alleviating specific production constraints (such as drought or weeds) to varying arbitrary degrees, but also the more circumscribed potential payoffs to specific technologies. DREAM is designed in particular to also examine the potential payoffs from the transfer and adaptation of technologies across locations (e.g. different countries and agroecological zones) as one strategy for enhancing local productivity more rapidly.
DREAM Research Evaluation Software Tool
The Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT) is a software program that simulates cropping systems including components of crop physiology, soil, weather, and field management practices. With its capability to simulate crop growth and production under the effects of options including different soil profiles, crop phenotypes, weather conditions, and management practices, DSSAT allows scientists to ask "what if" questions and simulate results by conducting experiments on computers. HarvestChoice uses DSSAT as a tool to estimate potential crop productivity in major farming systems defined in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
The Environmental Policy Integrated Climate (or Erosion Productivity Impact Calculator) (EPIC) is a software program developed to assess the effect of soil erosion on crop productivity and to predict the effects of farm management decisions on soil, water, and crop yields for areas with homogeneous soils and management practices. HarvestChoice uses EPIC as a tool to estimate potential crop productivity those major farming systems in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia for which DSSAT is not applied.
IMPACT is a multi-commodity, scenario based model designed to examine the potential impacts of a broad range of policy, technology and exogenous (e.g. climate) change on the future structure as well as market and economic flows across all commodities simultaneously (including crops, livestock and fishery sources of food). IMPACT focuses less than does DREAM on the nature of, and adoption processes associated with on farm and off-farm productivity change (dealing with them in a more aggregated way), but has the advantage of looking at the cross-commodity effects of change and at various other policy related distortions (e.g., trade effects at borders). IMPACT also explicitly embeds the role of water as a critical input, and its projections can be linked explicitly to implications of food and agriculture change on water use, as well as the implications of future competition for water on the potential impact of new technological, policy and investment options.
IMPACT-WATER Global Food Projection and Policy Evaluation Tool
MarkSim is a daily weather generator based on a Markov model for rainfall that is specially adapted to tropics. MarkSim works from a set of interpolated climate surfaces to fit the Markov model to the estimated climate data. It uses a third order model with a special stochastic resampling of the model parameters to realistically simulate the rainfall and temperature variances in the tropics. HarvestChoice uses MarkSim as a weather generator to create daily weather data in areas where historical weather data is not available.
