Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Various scaling methods have been used to link information from one level to
another, or to simulate the feedbacks between levels of organisation and processes.
For instance, EXPAMOD is used for upscaling the outputs from FSSIM to the
European scale, in the form of price-supply relationships (Pérez Domínguez et al.
2009)
. EXPAMOD uses an econometric approach to estimate a meta-supply
response function, that depends on price variations, farm characteristics, and corre-
sponding soil and climate conditions. The marginal effects of prices are extrapolated
to those farm types and regions not covered by FSSIM models. Finally, price-supply
elasticities are calculated and aggregated to match the product categories distin-
guished in CAPRI. APES, FSSIM, CAPRI and EXPAMOD have been integrated in
SEAMLESS-IF. The other components (Fig.
1.1
) are available as standalone, but
have not been integrated in SEAMLESS-IF so far.
The framework uses an integrated European database containing data on soils,
weather, farming systems, agro-management, prices, trade and policies, as well as
a library containing indicators for economic, environmental, social aspects
organised in an indicator framework (Janssen et al.
2009)
. Although the database in
SEAMLESS was primarily developed to feed the core models and store their
results, it also has stand-alone value. The data in this database include farm data
from the EU wide dataset Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) organized in
different farm types per region (NUTS1/2). Many variables are available for each
farm type and region referring to their economic, production, size, labour and struc-
tural characteristics. For a selection of regions farm activity data for the main farm
types provide a detailed understanding of the farming practices and main environ-
mental characteristics. European wide environmental data on climate, soil and
topography at different spatial levels from grid to region characterise the biophysi-
cal environment; an agri-environmental zonation is used to capture variation in
farming systems and biophysical conditions across the EU.
Software Architecture and Ontologies
The linkage of models designed for different scales and from biophysical and
socio-economic domains requires appropriate software architecture, and a design and
technical implementation of models that allows this. The software backbone of
SEAMLESS-IF, SeamFrame, serves that purpose (Chapter 9, this volume). SeamFrame
has been developed to facilitate re-use and linkage of models for integrative purposes.
Its core runs on a server and provides the services that can be used by the several
SEAMLESS client components and applications. SeamFrame is composed of a set of
software tools and components such as the modelling environment, project manager,
processing environment and the domain manager. The SeamFrame server interacts
with the SEAMLESS database and knowledgebase.
The SEAMLESS ontology plays a central role in SEAMLESS-IF for harmonising
and linking concepts from a wide range of knowledge domains: from models, to
indicators, to source data formats, etc. The use of ontologies to semantically annotate
