Internet Strategy

Given the difficulties "In the U.S., most rural households aren't hooking up to the high-speed Web. At the beginning of 2006, the Pew Internet and American Life Project estimated that only 24 percent of rural Americans use the Internet through a high-speed connection at home - almost half the percentage of suburban and urban users. " ....

Related to the above, we provide:

• Distance education, concepts and philosophies of management underlying Rural System
• A means to expedite Internet work throughout the region
• An information, gaming, and education center
• Links to all aspects of Rural System and important related sites

Web Site Service For Small Farms A new service, Small Farm Central, is working to provide web sites to small farms. The goal of Small Farm Central is to bridge the gap between rural food producers and urban consumers by allowing farmers to easily and cost-effectively set up their own farm web sites. Small Farm Central is a new company that assists small-scale farmers in marketing their farm and their products on the web. Sustainable Agriculture News Briefs - March 14, 2007

Our web site(s) will provide major communication links among all members of Rural System and open the gates to users, buyers, and members. It provides an e-commerce catalog, access to land, services, and products, serves several memberships within Rural System, provides a creative space for presenting ideas, but also for listening to the ideas, interests, and needs of potential customers. Much of Giles' web site may be wrapped into the site. Distance learning will be conducted from the site.

With competent work from an aggressive sales staff, this may become a major site for coordinated forestry, fisheries, wildlife, and wildland-related equipment, products, and services. It will link successful hunters and anglers, suggest "hot spots" for activities and provide "bragging space" for some outdoor users who have been very successful. It will provide links to land purchase and sales to sophisticated analyses (for the realtor as well as the potential owners) (e.g., virtual (photo) tours with services) and sets the stage for cost-effective future land management involving the diverse units of Rural System Advertising contracts will be sought, but major efforts will be to acquire a percentage of sales resulting from orders originating from this site.

It will house

• Natureseen (collections of unusual nature observations)
• Rural Lives - biographies of people of the region
• A collection of stories.
• Outdoor tips will be heavily used.
• Books related to nature and the great outdoors will be sold (e.g., via Amazon.com)
• A literary group is likely to form using the concepts in the web site called Stonesoup and developing a poetry e-chapbook.
• There will be an events monitor to publicize and describe the upcoming attractions: classes, field trips, scouting trips, BBQ's etc.

Education Strategy

Within The Q Works, The Rural System Behavioral Change Group, a for-profit educational space and working group may exist for youth and adults to deal with a variety of corporate interests. Youth tutoring and classes will be highlighted but adult education will be integrated with paid group activities in the area. A field museum and workshop in a high technology educational space (notes on The Didactron are available) will provide potentials for special markets.

Housing may be supplied by The Dogwood Inns as well as existing facilities. The diverse outdoor events, the "get-away," the special educational efficiencies, and group-structure-building of The Wildland Crew, will appeal to many corporations.

Education and training of personnel are commonplace in the field and within each unit. The Delta Educational Strategy is to develop optimal teaching-learning environments (room size, seating, color, training aids, audio-visual facilities, and optimal field plots and demonstration). The Delta strategy seeks out those optimal devices and environments, creates them, resists use of extra or sub-optimal equipment and demonstrations, and improves education facility use.

The novel criterion of the strategy is production effectiveness, i.e., maximum units of pre-specified behavioral change per dollar (or unit of energy) per hour. The strategy includes:

• Making available computer-managed and computer-aided instruction and "distance learning"
• Creating one or more optimal teaching learning environments.
• Creating a "strategic situation room."
• Conducting applied research in teaching aids.
• Selecting optimal siting and developing field labs and demonstration areas.
• Using un-timed instruction and distance learning.

The Didactron facility, proposed to be developed later, is only one part of a complex, high intensity educational program, largely self-taught, to bring citizens into an advanced educational status about natural resource total systems. A key element of the program is to teach the teachers about optimal wildland conditions. There are major educational aspects to all parts of Rural System, and all employees must understand the system. The facility is often used to bring experts to improve the unit performance. A course on advanced modern wildlife resource management (Distance learning, taught by Giles in 1999, Northern Virginia Graduate Center) and "Modern Wildlife Resource Management Systems", an introductory course in wildlife resource management, are profitable activities within the group.

The Summit

The Q Works sponsors the Pivotal Summit at a hotel/motel in the region. It is an exclusive annual retreat for the emerging wildlands industry. Overflow attendance is provided within the Dogwood Inns. Owners, presidents and CEOs from more than 60 companies and agencies attend this annual event. The Summit provides an ideal forum for executives to gain strategic insights, to network and to relax with other industry leaders. Topics covered include the state of the global and U.S. wildlands industries and practical advice on partnerships, marketing, planning, and acquisitions.

The Consequence Strategy

At the political borderline, but not crossing it, a Consequence Strategy is developed. Within The Q Works is the capability to do high quality environmental impact analyses, thus to cut the costs to citizens of these documents and the work to produce them for public projects that are desired ... and for projects that are not desired and groups wish to fight. Under contract, Rural System could produce best available information on the consequences of a range of projects proposed within the county:

• Linear, e.g., gas lines and power lines
• Points, e.g., structures, towers, and wells
• Areawide, e.g., air pollution plume maps, tax rate change
• Volumes, e.g., mining with options to modify return-to-contour designs for more long-term beneficial functions within the region (See Peculiar Manor, chapter 14.

This unique ability comes from knowledge of ecological modeling and systems building and use of transition tables or ecological succession. Only presenting the best data for others to use, the enterprise does not "take stands" and is available for either (or both) side of often-difficult environmental decisions. Previously, the mere presence of such a system has deterred people from presenting questionable proposals that would impact a county or private ownerships.

Optimization Unit

First developing R-Nexus, the software to serve developing rural businesses, this unit then develops other simulation and optimization systems including significant combinations of linear programming and expert systems, PERT techniques, Fibonacci searches,robust "heuristic programming" for tentative approximate solutions in the areas of

• Trail location
• Operation center locations
• Regionalization
• Antler production
• costs of hunting permits on an area
• Covey food plots
• local human diets
• songbird food
• small-wood products
• fencing
• bird house and bird feeder construction
• timber harvest schedules
• planting densities
• planting patterns (hexagonal effects)
• fire control
• optimum scale of a co-op
• several faunal management scoring procedures
• bird-watching sport (Avi)
• bee and honey enterprise (Butterfly band)
• pond optimization
• fish harvest optimization for " maximum success"
• conventional crop production
• livestock production (CoPlan)
• pasture management
• land valuation
• sales of optimization services and software
• integration of GIS and optimization
• new sensitivity analyses and parametric solutions
• expansions of Waldon's Wildwood
• "the best place for you to hunt" service
• garden optimization,

The Q Works is responsible for the financial analyses and decisions about start-up performance and initiatives. It will contract for office space, develop a communication system and procedures related to field work, establish the transportation policies (the "motor pool"), arrange for insurance, health, and retirement, develop the contacts for efficient contract reviews and approvals, and in the first year play a major role in recruiting staff. Safety programs will be implemented early, especially with staff of The Safety and Security Group. The novelty and advancement potentials of Rural System, the current recession, and looming political pressures should make it very attractive and some of the best university natural resource program graduates and agency professionals may be easily recruited.

The feedforward concept is promoted within each enterprise but collective work on estimating the future and preparing for the conditions estimated is the work of this unit. A regional credit-card system is developed for modest financial gains, shared resources, and local pride in shared activity.

The group promotes use of sophisticated management techniques at all turns.

Radio units with Earthwatch Radio should be considered. Submitting 2-minute units may be both good advertising and helpful.

Excellent information on changing human populations and new analyses can be sold or used in marketing. See, for example, Geolytics:

Since 1996 GeoLytics has published detailed demographic and geographic data on CD-ROM for business, academic, non-profit and government agencies. The company specializes in compressing large amounts of government data and packaging it with innovative and easy-to-use software. GeoLytics delivers the highest performance/cost ratio for datasets including demographic data, TIGER cartographic files, Estimates, Projections, and the Consumer Expenditure Survey. GeoLytics is a leading provider of public domain mapping and demographic data in the US. Statewide data are available for about $1200. (To order or for questions about any of these products, 1-800-577-6717 or Send an email at info@census-data.net)

See potentials for a Linux.com like program with agricultural and computer science students of Virginia Tech and elsewhere. These students might do summer work (with modest pay) on software of benefit to achieving the Rural System objectives.

Consider automated website translations such as suggested at:
Check our updated translations of RuralSystem.com into ten languages at: http://www--service.info/update.htm?d=lastingforests.com&e=w&p=t

Q Works is primarily one on the cost side of the corporate ledger. Some minor financial gains are expected from GIS services, products, and consulting services.

Perhaps you will share ideas with me about some of the topic(s) above at RHGiles@RuralSystem.com.

Maybe we can work together
... for the good of us all
... for a long time.

Home
Feb 7, 2005



Under Development

Q and its Computation See Revisions in Just Dreaming

Citizens, groups, and their government take steps to improve the Q index or "score" for an area, showing possible ways to reach the maximum or Q* (called "q-star"). We have some level of Q as a result of natural occurrences, the native resources of the region. We try to retain these and increase them to maximize a score, to reach a value of 100. Q is an expression of, a score for, the quality of life of people of the region. It cannot be compared with other regions of other people for it is based on the stated and valued objectives of the people of each region. Because of the area selected and the rich natural conditions, the score, without investments, may be high. Achieving a higher score or maintaining the present score usually takes investments of time, money, and other resources. The score is fairly simple:

Q_t = (1.0 - (Q* - A)/ Q*) x 100 Where Q_t is the estimated quality of life score for the people of a region in some specified year Q* is the estimated score when all citizens' objectives are met within 90% or more within an acceptable period, potentially related to the time of Q_t . As with conditions (A), citizen objectives may change, but such changes should be made carefully and slowly. A_t is the estimated computed score of actual achievement of objectives, the actual conditions, at the present time or other specified time t Studies may be made of how present-discounted costs (C*) of projects may influence A_t , thus the score, Q_t . Citizens and managers are reducing the difference, minimizing the deviation. Fluctuations are expected; control is expected and required for the effective manager. Diverse objectives, fluctuating markets, and natural catastrophe suggest modest bounds (here assigned 90%) on stating the "perfect score." Q* and A_t have the same dimensions. These are for each objective, having a named benefit such as service, product, structure, opportunity, view, information, idea, membership, or memory,

P - a relatively uniform socioeconomic group of people. There may be a hundred such groups with efforts made to reduce the neumbers to expedite the process and reduce costs. Over grouping, however, may imply exclusion and produce special conflicts and separate responses I - the named benefits (e.g., rich landscape views, hours of big game hunting, tons of hay, cubic feet of pulpwood)

T time - with results in each year and cumulatively

D - numbers of units of each I that are perceived to be needed per capita; when this number, the "economic demand" exceeds natural capabilities of the present system (e.g., more water than the rainfall total in the region) an "infeasible condition" statement results. The Q Works staff then explore various options and explore the limits of the infeasible in a hands-on procedure.

V - the relative value, with one unit of benefit item with the greatest value being assigned a value of 100 Computer aids assist in this laborious and difficult task, that is essential to deciding between the different levels of importance held by different people, even groups of people.

Z - Expected Value - In one area in the Virginia coalfield, the range in annual precipitation has been from 40 to 51 inches. This annual difference in an 8000 acre watershed is 2.4 billion gallons of water. In the low-rainfall year there may have been an intense storm that caused more erosion than all of that produced gradually in the high precipitation year. To try to be very accurate in the face of such unpredictable difference is unwise. Herein we include these uncertainties, the risks related to most decisions. We are playing a reasoned game against nature so as to win most over the long run (e.g., in reduced erosion or reduced flood crests). The concept is one of looking at costs of using the land in some reasonably long planning or investment period (e.g.. 150 years) and dealing with expected returns

Z = (1.0 - risk of failure).

Expected returns include the element of risk that can be quantified, options presented, and analyzed by decision makers. The reports are intended to assist in sizing up the risk, a number fully as important to the decision maker as acres in cover type A or inches of snow fall, or depth of soil to bedrock.

S - Substitutability - a simple triangular matrix, of what number of items of one benefit (if any) that may substitute for another (e.g., a rich trail landscape view for a view of a deer) chang R to Qvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

1. R Index - Profits are widely reported of secondary interest for the small inductrial private forest land owner. We describe in detail elsewhere the objectives and means for owners to quantify the many dimensions of such objectives. A non-linear parametric procedure is used to match expected land productivity over time (succession or a transition production function approach) to desired owner objectives. It too minimizes the squared deviation of the actuual from the desired conditions on the land. The efffective manager with knowledge and resources, is in control of that difference.
2. Suggested steps (a table) to improve the R index or "score" for an area, showing possible ways to reach the maximum or R* goes beyond a simple study of optima from a given set of alternatives. Within the system, overall scores of the managed area are computed under varying conditions, thereby allowing comparisons to be made among the present conditions (described by a performance measure R) and the optimum condition, one with a score of R*. Expressions of maximum total benefits for people over the longrun that include reasosnable subsistence (but not necessarily blue-chip investment returns). In addition, there are procedures to gain wide citizen or key decision-maker inputs in a practical format. A modified benefit-to-cost algorithm is used, incorporating expert systems advances and artificial intelligence with non-linear optimization, all well placed on the land using the power of modern geographic information systems and global positioning technology.