Identification of Potential Area for Paddy Field to Increase Rice Production Using Model Builder and Its Publication on The Internet: Case of Lombok Island, West Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia

Abstract

The study was conducted to identify the suitable location for paddy field to increase rice production in Lombok Island. Since rice is the staple food of the majority of Asian countries including Indonesia, the study about rice production is becoming one of the main researches conducted in those areas. Model builder was used to create the model and to find the potential area for paddy field. The result showed that 3.19% (146 km2) of the total area (4564 km2) are best areas with maximum productivity, 2.73% (125 km2) as potential areas, and 1.24% (57 km2) considered as potential areas with specific treatment. These areas are mainly located in the west and south part of the Island. The result is then published on the Internet. The multiple benefits of using a Web based GIS are that we have centralized base-map data meaning that the data can be managed more easily and everyone has access to changes as soon as they are updated. The database management system used for this study is PostgreSQL coupled with PostGIS. We found that this software has high capacity of storing and managing data. Ka-map was used as web-mapping interface and it provided different GIS tools such as zoom, pan, full extent, scale, legend, query option that allow users to retrieve attribute data from related database tables by selecting any location on the map. The benefits of this work are that further research can be done by considering other parameters such as climate and soil, and to focus on the sustainability of paddy field based on economic and social factors.