Open AccessAn historical perspective on the development of forest planning models with emphasis on operational level
Author(s) -
Patricia Vieira dos Santos,
A. Silva,
Andrey Lessa Derci Augustynczik,
Júlio Eduardo Arce
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
revista internacional de métodos numéricos para cálculo y diseño en ingeniería
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.213
H-Index - 9
eISSN - 1886-158X
pISSN - 0213-1315
DOI - 10.23967/j.rimni.2021.04.007
Subject(s) - operational planning , perspective (graphical) , strategic planning , computer science , forest management , operations research , business , environmental resource management , geography , forestry , engineering , environmental science , marketing , artificial intelligence
The application of operations research techniques has led to a substantial improvement in the economic and ecologic efficiency of forest management, both for planted and natural forests. Forest planning addresses problems in different hierarchical levels that involve specific planning horizons and formulation complexity. This study proposes an historical perspective on the development of forest planning models in the last five decades, with a focus on the operational level. The emergence of operations research applied to forest planning problems can be dated back to the 60’s, with an intensification of this line of research on the 80’s and 90’s, accompanying the fast development on the available computing power. In the 90’s, forest planning problems started to be classified according to hierarchical levels in strategic, tactical and operational. While the strategic and tactical levels address decisions on the long- and medium-term, the operational level deals with short-term decisions, typically involving harvesting machinery allocation and transportation of forest products. In this sense, the operational planning is characterized by a high level of complexity of the planning models and economic importance to forest management. We conclude that despite the increasing number of publications related to forest planning, the operational level remains underrepresented and efforts to integrate decisions across the different hierarchical levels of forest planning are required.