EVALUATION AND ASSESSMENT OF FAO TOOLS FOR PLANNING OF THE USE AND MANAGEMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES BY AGRICULTURE AT THE NATIONAL, REGIONAL AND GLOBAL SCALES

FAO has commissioned the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II - in collaboration with CNR-ISAFOM - to make a study of all land evaluation, land assessment and crop simulation tools currently maintained by the NR Department with the objective of evaluating the status and prospects of such tools in order to carry out better planning for the future. This was performed to obtain a better and more comprehensive view of the usefulness of each tool for FAO's technical work, both at Headquarters and as part of FAO's technical assistance to countries, and to better understand the potential and future investment needs in their maintenance, update and further development.More specifically, the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II was asked, having as background the achievement of FAO Strategic Objectives, to "provide scientific services and qualified expertise to:?make an analytical assessment of FAO's tools for land evaluation and crop modeling, including GAEZ, LRIMS, BEFS-tools, MOSAICC, AquaCrop [and ALES, added in a second stage]; ?evaluate the scope, state of development, technical characteristics, complexity of use, readiness and complexity to transfer these tools for use by FAO's member countries, including the hardware and software requirements for such transfer, maintenance and update;?the availability of training and support; ?evaluate these findings and prepare recommendations for future development requirements under different scenarios of applicability, including climate change scenarios and management considerations"