Developing an Information System for Sustainable Natural Resource Management in Alborz Watershed, Northern Iran

This article explores the potentials of systems analysis and design of information system for sustainable natural resource management. Soft and hard system analyses were performed to better understand the information needs and design of an information system for improving decision making for achieving sustainable natural resource management. In order to analyze the complex and soft systems situations for developing an effective information system, which meets related actors’ changing needs, a conceptual model inspired by soft systems methodology (SSM) was developed. This model is based on information derived from twelve farmers who were purposely selected to represent diverse conditions and 23 agricultural extension experts across the Alborz Watershed in Mazandaran Province, located in northern Iran. Since a conceptual model resulting from SSM is not in itself sufficient as the basis for the implementation of information systems, a hard system methodology was used to structure the data handling by using unified modeling language. This research has shown the promising potentiality of using soft system analysis methodology as a preliminary step to the actual design of an information system in the natural resource management situation in the watershed system level when combined with hard system analysis methods.