This project will develop a Norwegian agricultural policy decision support tool.
This tool, named Agri-Impact, can be used to assist policy-makers in understanding how their policy decisions affect several impact categories; for example, water availability, food security and climate change. Essentially, this is the operationalization of Ruralis’ expertise in a way that is easily accessible to policy-makers. The tool will enable a policy-maker to understand how a policy decision affects several impact categories through feedback relationships that are difficult to communicate without an interactive tool. For example, when a policy-maker makes a decision to reduce climate emissions in agriculture, how does this affect food security in a time of an increasing risk of drought? The tool allows policy-makers to understand complex system relationships though the flip of a switch in a user interface developed for optimal user engagement. This is not only a decision support tool for policy-makers, but also a tool that can be utilized to address many types of research questions and can be used in many different Ruralis projects. In addition, other institutes/universities can use this in their research projects, making Ruralis an attractive project partner.