1) User needs to establish ecology. Which is pretty much mapping input attributes of one perma species to ouput attributes of another. I tend to think of these inputs and outputs as elements. Excess elements can be taken out of the whole process/cycle and be sold/traded and they represent the process "yield". 

I've been working on some (presently) closed source permaculture software. I'm not necessarily adverse to open sourcing it. My approach is a little different to some of the ideas here in that I'm trying to steer clear of the mapping/spacial stuff, an instead focus more on managing, implementing and living with the permaculture design. Very early days yet, the app is up at:

Great to see motivated folks talking about Permaculture. I'd love to join the discussion as a permaculture designer and software developer. More about me here: http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Simon_Walter-Hansen

@hafeez: Thanks for the proposal. You've got some good ideas. If you haven't already, I would recommend picking up a book on permaculture, like Intro to Permaculture or Gaia's Garden and getting familiar with the scope of the design process.

Permaculture design process typically follows the following schedule:

Here is a bit more detail on the process a permaculture designer goes through: http://www.self-willed-land.org.uk/permaculture/design_process.htm

Defining which parts of this process the software will support will be critical. Places where computers are great tools are in tabulating data, multi-variable calculations, graphical plotting.

Some areas that could use computer support in permaculture design:

It looks to me like the software being proposed is mainly focused on guild building, which is an important consideration in any permaculture design. This is a highly-variable and subjective process and would be cool to have a software that "suggests" plant guilds, but also a crowd-sourced portion where people can input their own and rate particular succeses or failures. Collecting both success and failure is critically important for learning. As suggested, http://pfaf.org/ is a good resource for plant data. They used to have an awesome data search query, but it has been simplified to make it more accessible to casual users.

I think it is important to note that western culture has become very accustomed to having access to food from around the world, relying heavily on a handful of domesticated plants. It is good to know what you like and what you want to eat; this should definitely be part of the selection process. It would also be valuable to know what grows well and not so well or not at all in a particular climate/bio-region and suggest accordingly. Some form of ranking system for plant selection and an option for greenhouse cultivation in the software evaluation. I might choose to grow some sweet corn, even though yield is low where I live, because I like to eat it; yet the software might suggest growing potatoes for a significantly higher caloric return per area planted.

There are a lot of components that go into a permaculture design, it'd be great to see a development process that allows development at the component level and a way to combine or have the components inter-operate. I definitely see an online database component being a valuable tool, as we want to be continually collecting data points from around the world and refining our understand of the interactions at work in nature. Being able to have a local store of relevant data is highly desirable for many reasons. Being able to select for an offline version of a specific bio-region would allow a smaller database to be loaded. Lets also think about a cross-platform version that could be run directly from a DVD, complete with how-to videos on horticultural best-practices, grafting, pruning, animal care, plant propagation, seed saving, etc. There are plenty of books on the subject, but seems like a great opportunity to open-source the necessary knowledge for growing food and put it on a DVD, too!

Cheers!

-Simon

Thanks for the link, but i think i am already knee deep into the app i am developing. How are your web programming skills? Would you like to take initiative on this?

I am glad we have someone who practices Permaculture design here. Thanks for your tips and yes i am already consulting a book that i mentioned earlier. As for the purpose of the application i am working on, i am mainly concentrating on design and analysis side. I definitely have  GIS  and mapping on my mind but will need to evaluate my options when i get there. Can you please write something on the principles of Zone/Sector analysis? 

Currently i am trying to get the search and data access functionality to work. Once that is done i will share my results (code, application and screen shots). After that i will be working on mapping functionality(mapping species based on input/output). I have been evaluating Java 2D, Draw2D and JavaGraph for mapping purposes.

In the meanwhile , some screen shots of the UI and actual eclipse solution with code :)

It seems to me that Python is generally pretty popular for hardware projects.