Plant pest risk information system (PPRIS) for USDA‐APHIS: design of a functional prototype

Abstract

The Plant Pest Risk Information System (PPRIS) is a computerized decision‐support system for plant pest risk assessment in the USA, being developed for use by personnel of the US Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Plant Protection and Quarantine, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS). PPRIS is being designed to retrieve information from such diverse sources as: EPPO PQ database, USDA‐Agricultural Research Service's (ARS) Fungi on Plants and Plant Products database, bibliographic databases on compact disc media, on‐line INTERNET databases and risk assessment documents. PPRIS will offer access to a wide variety of risk assessment processes. A PPRIS evaluation prototype was created in Visual Basic ver. 3.0 operating in a Windows 3.1 environment. EPPO‐PQ and ARS‐Fungi databases were imported and stored in ORACLE ver. 6.0. Query functionality of the prototype was tested by retrieving information from the two internal ORACLE databases. The PPRIS evaluation prototype provides interfaces to the CABPEST bibliographic compact disc and to communication software for on‐line database searches. Three risk assessment processes were incorporated into the evaluation prototype: the decision sheet, generic risk assessment and enhanced hazard identification. The evaluation prototype also includes access to Wordperfect for Windows through the Windows Program Manager for storage and retrieval of risk assessment documents.