FOREST MODELS CONSIDERING SPATIAL LOCATION, FIRES AND CHAIN INTEGRATION

Summary

This project has four parts,
a)  Forest harvesting with fire protection considerations
In a previous project, carried out in collaboration with Canadian researchers and funding, we developed an approach to integrate forest harvesting and fire protection. This is a novelty, not previously considered, where harvested forest units act as firebreaks. In that  project it was shown that fires decreased and overall timber production increased with the integrated approach. This approach considered the use of three separate programs: a fire spread simulation, valuation of fire protection provided by harvesting stands and a harvest planning model .  Two papers have been developed for publication. In this project we propose  to integrate the three models into one , introducing in an approximate way fire spread  relations into the harvesting model, instead of the previous iteration among three models.

b)  Spatial machine  harvesting . We consider here the problem  of location of harvesting machinery building and access road . This problem is important in actual use by forest companies, and so far has been solved via heuristics. Exact formulations have solved only small size problems.We propose to solve the problem with exact formulations based on a Steiner tree formulation.

c)  The forest supply chain. Unlike the manufacturing area, in forestry not much effort has been carried out in integrating decisions along the supply chain. In this project we propose to develop models to integrate the supply chain at tactical/strategic level to consider investments and long range planning . The challenge is to find the correct coordination between forest productions, plant capacities (existing and to be built) and markets, considering spatial locations and transportation: We will compare this approach with the traditional forest planning approach of not integrating downstream operations. The studies will be carried out with data from Chilean forest firms.

d)  In a separate study, we wish to develop a problem in transportation. In a previous Fondecyt, based on data from Xerox on its repair service, we developed a model to schedule daily assignment of technicians clients, with clear improvements over manual planning. We also considered the case of uncertainty in service times and developed a robust programming approach for this problem. Two papers are being completed on this problems. In the present project we wish to study the problem of fleet design  , considering  uncertainties in demands, seasonality and desired quality of service. An integration  of simulation and an exact formulation might provide acceptable solutions.