Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 4.1
Main typologies of models and outputs of APES. The details of both are described
in the text
•
Simulate all agricultural production activities of interest (e.g. crops, grasses,
vineyards, agro-forestry); and
Simulate agro-management and its impact on the system
•
Component Based Structure
There is no single solution to the problem of splitting complex systems into
components. However, some divisions are more effective than others. The criteria
used for doing this in APES were:
•
Consistency with knowledge about the organization of the real system
•
Consistency with the goal of encapsulating a useful/reusable set of modelling
solutions relevant to the specific domain; and
Minimization of the need for communication between components within a
•
time step
This has led to components being developed with different model granularities
(from the whole system perspective) as one of the possible solutions to modularization
of agricultural production systems. Figure
4.2
shows the APES model components
included in the December 2008 release.
