Permaculture Database

[Paul Cereghino <paul.cereghino@comcast.net>]

Jedd - I think you line of thinking around playing out scenarios is 
right on target.  I don't know if this is where your going, but I want 
to steer us away...

I am not convinced that a PCDB can be designed, or should be designed to 
be a predictive model.

- regional variation in diseases and pests may cause members to drop in 
and out of guilds.
- interaction dynamics will change depending on what environmental 
conditions are causing stress or disturbance
- different installation and maintenance structure can affect the 
outcome of any design.
- subtlties of place will make the purported beneficial interactions of 
a guild meaningless.

after a lifetime of research you might be able to model the response of 
hackberry accross soils, climates, densities, stressors, disturbance 
regime, maintenance regime, browse pressure etc... just one species (I 
don't know anyone that grows hackberry around my neighborhood...).  Now 
take four woody species and throw them together with 15 groundcovers, in 
15 different climates, in 15 different soils, with 15 different 
stewards!!  I am not saying you will have more then a thousand 
permutations, but you are going to have clusters of outcomes depending 
on context.  Now we are talking about hundreds of species central to 
human diet, and a thousand of strong interest... many of which we have 
only a vague understanding of their autecology.

You cannot model when you don't have accurate parameters.  Every 
parameter has error (for example your -10 to +10 scale).  When you 
include increasing numbers of parameters each with error into a complex 
model.. (and we are talking about an astoundingly complex model!) the 
error propagates unexpectedly.  The model fails to predict reality.  We 
don't have the information to feed the model.  We will not have that 
information... too much interaction between parameters, too much 
substantial variation.  A database cannot discriminate.. the 
discriminatory capacity must be imbedded in the data.  Our ability to 
provide the the data required to make a database discriminate is 
inadequate.  It is the million monkeys on typewriters trying to write 
shakespeare.  Or alternately we keep our relationships general, and the 
model can't discriminate at all.  It misses obvious flaws and generates 
thousands of 'beneficial' combinations without a 'second thought', 
without a 'gut reaction'.

In my mind the goal is to create more effective human designers so they 
can create systems in place and report back... my goal would be to 1) 
support human agro-ecological designers by creating a self-regulating 
information system that creates beneficial information linkages between 
individuals (or books and individuals).   The function of the system is 
not to design, it is to facilitate information flow between human 
designers.  My sister worked in DB design in a massive social services 
DB in California.  When they were developing the datastructure, they 
spent weeks traveling with social workers in cars from contact to 
contact, studying how they thought about their clients, how the 
classified information, the sequence of their thinking...

I doubt the function of the database will never be more than a 
repository of information that allows for dynamic queries.  All the 
information will be variably accurate.  I think you are right in trying 
to understand who will be approaching a data set, what questions they 
will ask, and what kind of information would benefit them, and 
identifying sources of error.

In fact one of the critical questions is how does the database gather 
information.  As they say, shit in, shit out.  As recently mentioned (I 
think D'Aoust in response to London) The nature and limitations of the 
'observations' going into the system will totally constrain the ability 
to access useful information.

Paul Cereghino