A GIS-MCE based model for forest road planning

Abstract

ABSTRACT:One of the cost factors in forest management is the development of road infrastructure. The objective of study was to develop a method using GIS and Multi-criteria Evaluation (MCE) to design a forest road network with the lowest construction cost while maintaining other technical requirements. Six road alternatives meeting technical requirements were developed using PEGGER. Then MCE was used to evaluate the construction costs of the candidate networks. The decision making group identified six factors as being relevant to the costs of forest roads. Then factors were compared in a pair-wise comparison, in the context of the Analytic Hierarchy Process to develop weights of map layers. Then weights and factors were entered into the MCE module to create a final suitability map. The total cost of each alternative was extracted from the suitability map and the unit cost of each alternative was calculated. The results showed that alternatives one and two had the highest and lowest unit costs, respectively. The results illustrated the utility of using GIS and MCE to improve the planning process.

Technical assessment of forest road network using Backmund and surface distribution algorithm in a hardwood forest of Hyrcanian zone

“…In agreement with the mentioned report, road density in forest district I and II were 17.68 and 21.1 m ha -1 , respectively. Abdi et al (2009) used geographical information system and multi-criteria evaluation to design a forest road network with the lowest construction cost. This algorithm is useful to evaluate and select optimum road from different alternatives.…”

Planning of environmentally sound forest road route using GIS & S-MCDM

“…In this study, S-TOPSIS was used. In previous scientific studies, S-AHP work has been widely used and the advantages of this method have been clearly studied (Majnounian et al, 2007;Abdi at al.,2009;Naghi et al, 2012;Hayati et al, 2012;Hayati et al, 2013;Çalışkan, 2013;Pellegrini et al 2013;Lashi et al 2016).…”

Increased fly ash utilization — value addition through forest road reconstruction

“…Many previous forest road cost studies have focused on the cost minimization of new forest road network planning and construction (Akay 2003;Akay and Sessions 2005;Abdi et al 2009;Ghajar et al 2013). These studies focused more on the effects of forest road location in relation to construction costs, but different road materials were not compared.…”