I-Phy (former name Ipest) was developed by van der Werf and Zimmer (1998) and is a so-called fuzzy expert system (Van Der Werf and Zimmer, 1998). It relates to the potential environmental impact of the application of a pesticide in a field crop and is defined by four modules. One reflects the presence (rate of application) of the pesticide, the other three reflect the risk for three major environmental compartments (groundwater, surface water, air).

The input variables for these modules are pesticide properties, site-specific conditions and characteristics of the pesticide application. I-Phy calculates the risk of surface water contamination, risk of groundwater contamination and risk of air contamination based on information on pesticide properties, site specific conditions and application conditions. I-Phy has been used to assess the sustainability of cropping systems in France (Bockstaller et al., 2008; Chikowo et al., 2009) and recently an improved groundwater module was published (Lindahl and Bockstaller, 2012).

 

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