Análise espacial como instrumento avaliativo de instituições de pesquisa agropecuária – Brasil

Abstract

Evaluate is a fundamental process for the continuous development of institutions. In this way, the objective of this study was evaluated through the spatial analysis of the institutional impact of agricultural research centers. The motivation for the development of this work is in the search to aggregate to the methodologies of evaluation of commonly existent impacts (economic, social and environmental), a new look at the reality of research institutions. For this, a contextualization of the process of modernization of agriculture and dissemination of agricultural research institutions by the country was done, whose results showed that these processes walked together and influenced each other. Next, the methodology was developed to evaluate the spatial impact of research institutions called GeoImpacto, which was applied in three different research centers of Embrapa, with 2015 data. This methodology resulted in the observation of important impacts of the centers in their areas of activity, but also showed the need to improve the way each one works with its target audience, its partners and the generation and dissemination of technologies. Finally, other possibilities of spatial assessment of impact were presented, through the punctual analysis of events, taking as an example the soybean and its interaction with the research institutions that have this product in its lines of research. Five methods were chosen for application in the data: punctual patterns, medium center, standard deviation of the ellipse, cluster and proximity. Each of these techniques proved to be important and complementary in the construction of knowledge about the interaction between soybean-research institutions and helped confirm that there is an intense concentration of both punctual events studied (soybean and research institutions). On the other hand, there is also a distribution of these events in most of the Brazilian regions, as well as an important interaction between soybean and soybean research institutions. The impact assessment, of any subject, is an important process for institutions that need to demonstrate to society the results of their research. In this way, the improvement of this type of analysis with the inclusion of other biases, as is the case of spatial analysis, improves the results of the evaluation generated and opens new perspectives to see the role of these institutions in society. The proposed methodology was the first step towards this new look on agricultural research centers.