This paper presents an approach towards the development of a Geographic Information System (GIS) for crop area estimation to support crop forecasting systems at a regional level. The overall system design aimed at supporting crop area estimation through area frame sampling (AFS), remote sensing, and a combination of AFS and remote sensing. However, the detailed design was carried out to support AFS only. Later, a system was realized which can support AFS survey design, field work, data processing as well as quality assessment of the input data. Based on this, two prototype systems were designed, the so-called CAEIS - I and CAEIS - II. CAEIS - I was developed using the Arc Macro Language (AML) of UNIX-based Arc/Info software, and CAEIS - II was developed using Microsoft Access on a PC environment. Later, the functions of the system were tested and evaluated, using field data collected from Razan township in Hamadan province of the Islamic Republic of Iran during the summer of 1997. The results showed a satisfactory match between the area of major agricultural commodities derived through the developed system and those areas derived by Agricultural Statistics Information Division (ASID) of the Ministry of Agriculture, I.R. of Iran.
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