AN OBJECT-ORIENTED FIELD OPERATIONS SIMULATOR IN PROLOG
Harbans Lal, R. M. Peart, Jerry W. Jones, W. David Shoup · Transactions of the ASAE · 1991
ABSTRACT This article describes the structure, logic, and programming technique of an agricultural simulation model in Logic Programming (PROLOG) with object-oriented data structures. The model simulates field operations of multicrop production systems by estimating work based upon the available farm resources (machinery and labor) and weather on a daily basis. The conventional approach to simulation in procedural languages makes it difficult to capture the human decision patterns responsible for the system's behavior. Simple approximations and averages are often used, instead. The new simulation approach facilitated representing and manipulating qualitative knowledge (heuristics) such as the manager's preferences in allocating the available resources (machinery and labor) to different operations, in addition to quantitative and procedural computations essential for simulating the system's behavior. The testing procedures for verifying the performance of the simulator and the quality of the reports produced are discussed along with the results.