DEVECOL is an information management system designed for sustainable development field workers who want to learn from site-specific experiences in comparable environments anywhere in the world.

DEVECOL was initially designed as an aid to rural development field workers in Sub-Saharan Africa. The resource employs digital maps to help find and examine documentation on local development and research experiences. The system combines digital base maps, thematic maps, and geo-referenced document sites linked to digital source documents to provide a way for planners and managers to simultaneously access spatial and text information. This makes it possible to find documents that otherwise are hard to locate geographically, and find documents in similar environments, as shown by various themes added to the base maps (i.e.terrain, soils, and climate). This is technically possible thanks to the integrating capabilities of GIS systems.

The maps and documents can be accessed from the Geo e-Links page.

The DEVECOL information system seeks to overcome two important barriers to the transfer of experience and knowledge about sustainable rural development — 1) finding and obtaining written accounts of local development experiences, and 2) assessing the relevance of an account to one's situation.

Many local experiences are documented as case studies but are difficult to locate using bibliographic search routines. This occurs when they are edited as chapters or included in annexes and thus are not shown in the bibliographic record. In the DEVECOL system, such experiences are identified, managed individually, and made accessible to the user, case by case.

Even with a report on a promising experience in hand, a field worker or planner may find it difficult to assess its relevance and applicability to local conditions. This arises when descriptions of local ecological conditions - terrain, climate, soils - are weak or missing altogether. Ecological conditions are a fundamental determinant of the outcome of practically all rural initiatives, and ecological appropriateness is a sine qua non of sustainability.

The DEVECOL system helps the user assess the relevance of an experience by means of various continental map overlays that show the general ecological context of a document site. The use of the maps does not require expertise in Geographic Information Systems, although these are integral to DEVECOL's information management system.

Originally prepared in 2000 for distribution on compact disk for Sub-Saharan Africa, this information resource is now accessed on the worldwide web via the Geo e-Links pages on this web site. The CD is no longer produced.

Devecol and Geo e-Links have been developed with support from USAID's Bureau for Africa, Bureau for Humanitarian Relief and Global Bureau.