Natural Resources Inventory and Analysis Institute

Technical Resources

Web Work For Economics

History

The Economics site was started in 1996 as http://waterhome.tamu.edu/NRCSdata/. It became the main site hosting 90% of the economic and watershed planning technical materials including over 100 economic tools, and 60 years of economic and watershed technical notes. A few of the newer items are also hosted on other webfarm sites.

Ramona Taylor has developed a framework Economics site at
https://web-review.sc.egov.usda.gov/economics/index.html with a development site at http://zeos.brc.tamus.edu/Economic/
This draft site is currently under NRCS Look&Feel review by Lee Goodman, ITD.

Content

The older site has a lot of content in it, most of which will be converted.

Web Site	HTML	DOC	PDF	XLS	PPT	Total Regular Page Formats	Other Formats	Current Size (MB)	Projected Size After Revisions (MB)
NRCSdata	457	597	727	1,182	57	8,222	5,202	2,636	600
Clients	424	34	12	44	18	1,759	1,227	322	150
NRCSecon	62	114	12	155	5	660	312	45	20
Total new Economics Analysis site	943	745	751	1,381	80	10,641	6,741	3,003	770
CARE	918	82	624	54	-	4,577	2,899	516	450
Total	1,861	827	1,375	1,435	80	15,218	9,640	3,519	1,220

The draft site for review currently under Look & Feel review contains only 6MB of materials, but 800 files in 75 folders since it has all the draft subwebs. The bulk of the content will be reformatted to NRCS L&F, and ported over gradually.

Future

This website will be converted under every future scenario; there is too much archived materials to lose, and 60 NRCS economists use the site on a regular basis. Even given reorganization, it will probably follow David into a Regional Technology Center. It will go with the regular NRCS website framework, much like the www.soils.nrcs.usda.gov site.

We hope to get the draft/framework www.economics.nrcs.usda.gov site published before the end of April. Converting and moving the hundreds of older site materials over will be a slow steady job, and a good starting job for student interns if we can hire any this summer. I might be able to get unpaid interns working for class credit next fall for this job.