Tropentag, October 6 - 8, 2009 in Hamburg "Biophysical and Socio-economic Frame Conditions for the Sustainable Management of Natural Resources"

Long Term Benefit of Research for Development Projects through Sustainable Information Management

¹Cropster.org, Research and Development, Colombia
²International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Decision and Policy Analysis (DAPA), Nicaragua
³Cropster.org, IT Development, Austria

Abstract

A lot of data is gathered from stakeholders of research for development projects. After termination and publication of the analyses the data is archived and the stakeholder do not directly benefit from the data other than through the more general new methodologies and approaches developed.

Research projects can increase impact and sustainability through a more targeted and intelligent use of information technology. Easy to use and internet based information management systems (IMS) can bring positive long-term effects to project's beneficiaries and boost the project's success beyond general applicable results.

We propose an IMS that permits to capture and maintain data as near as possible to where it is generated and used. An intelligently designed web based IMS can provide direct and targeted data access and feedback to the corresponding stakeholders, that can include rapid data analyses and automatically generate reports whenever needed. It has long-term benefits for all participants of a project. Stakeholders such as farmers and associations have always and direct access to their data and learn to manage it, projects benefit from efficient data provision, researchers and project managers dispose of the required data and information in real time to perform analyses and take accurate decision.

We describe a case study of a research project funded by an industry donor where data compiled by farmers associations is used to predict and quantify the impact of climate change on farmers livelihoods. The same data within a multiple stakeholder data base framework is used to increase product sourcing efficiency and to keep farm and production data up-to-date.

Keywords: Development research, information management

Contact Address: Norbert Niederhauser, Cropster.org, Research and Development, CRA 10 # 3 - 64, 760044 Cali, Colombia, e-mail: norbert.niederhausercropster.org