Development of expert system modeling based decision support system for swine manure management

Animal waste has always been considered as a resource for agricultural input as biofertilizer. However, the management is becoming more stringent due to environmental regulations. Livestock producers are faced with different manure management options that may be implemented into their operations. Given the expansion of the livestock industry, the implementation of environmental regulations, and the increasing importance of social and health issues, the selection of optimal manure management systems is becoming a strategically important task. Increasingly, integrated decision support systems (DSSs) are becoming necessary to assist decision makers in their evaluation of different manure management alternatives, like, liquid system, semi-solid system, solid system and bio-gas or bio-energy system based on combinations of different manure management sub-systems (collection, storage and application). To address this situation, a user-friendly computer program called Integrated Swine Manure Management (ISMM) is being developed for the Canadian Prairie provinces. Decision criteria including environmental, agronomic, social and health, greenhouse gas emission, and economic factors have been considered for the selection, design, and operation of the DSS. The expert system modeling is based on Visual Basic programming. Decision on adopting a particular combination of systems components is based on performance rating of the overall system. The program is interactive so that weighting factors for the different decision criteria can be varied to suit site-specific considerations. In this paper, the systems approach for development of an integrated liquid manure management system is discussed. Using a case study, sensitivity analysis of different combinations of management components is also reported for systems performance. The decision software compared satisfactorily with other available DSS packages.