With 15 years of efforts, Dr. Wu Yongchang team in the Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning (IARRP) of CAAS, recently released China’s first multidimensional-information-based Spatial Agricultural Planning System (SAPS). The SAPS is based on the coupled multidimensional relationships among space, time and information, successfully develops the specific Virtual Reality (VR) processing core engine and fully integrates the CAD, GIS, 3D and VR technologies to establish three-level system application models, i.e., county level, agricultural park level and modern agricultural enterprise level with a scale of 1:10000, 1:5000 and 1:2000, respectively.

This system, characterized by its highly efficient overlays and fusion of different information, temporal and spatial elements, can not only easily demonstrate the planning maps in 3D and VR using its functional components, but also flexibly represent the different planning schemes under a certain time and space condition, and automatically produce the relevant maps and income of investment. Furthermore, through its interactive touching technique, the ARPS can quickly explore the planned objects in a VR way at various angles, spatially compare the 3D visions between before and after the construction, as well as realize the digital management of planned agriculture park under the support of agricultural resource database of planned objects.

This system has been widely applied in agricultural region planning at different levels as it can provide a convenient, interactive and common platform for servicing the multiple subjects of agricultural production management. So far, the SAPS has been successfully applied in more than 10 projects, such as agricultural park planning of Zhongshan in Guangdong Province, Tongchuan and Yaozhou in Shannxi Province, Fenggang in Guizhou Province, and the Binhai Economic Development Area in Tianjin. Related research on SAPS has achieved rich achievements, such as 1 national patent, 3 software copyrights, 2 published books and 1 EI published article.