Operations Research and Optimisation Techniques in Forest Management and Operations
A special issue of Forests (ISSN 1999-4907). This special issue belongs to the section "Forest Operations and Engineering".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 January 2022) | Viewed by 29191
Special Issue Editors
Interests: optimization methods in forestry; wood supply chain management and optimization; sensing technology; AI and automation in forestry
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: transportation planning; tactical forest planning; strategic forest planning; decision support systems for road management; biomass collection and transport; steep slope mechanization
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: operations research; operations management; logistics and transportation; forest management; forest fires management
Special Issue Information
Dear colleagues,
Forest management involves making decisions on the planning, use, and conservation of forests and related resources, including timber, water, wildlife, recreation, or a combination. Forest resource managers must make critical long- and short-term decisions, including daily operational activities. Operations research (OR) methods, primarily optimization techniques such as linear and mixed-integer programming, have been extensively used to support effective planning and management of forests and forest supply chains. Optimization is a type of prescriptive analytics that finds a “best” solution from a set of “feasible” solutions, using a mathematical algorithm that maximizes or minimizes a specified objective function subject to constraints. In forest management and planning, decision-making processes often use OR techniques to provide optimal solutions that will best meet the objectives of the landowners or land managers.
The focus of this Special Issue of Forests is on OR techniques in forest management and operations. Research articles may focus on any application of mathematical models and decision support tools for the optimization of one or more components of forest planning and operations, including decisions at strategic, tactical, and operational planning levels. Topics can include but are not limited to harvest scheduling in even and un-even forests to meet production and ecological objectives, forest planning under uncertainty (e.g., pests, fire), supply chain optimization including economic, social, and environmental objectives, optimized network design including the optimal location of timber and biomass facilities, and optimized harvesting and transport logistics. Solution techniques may include, among others, linear and nonlinear programming, mixed-integer programming, stochastic programming, multi-objective and goal programming, dynamic programming, network programming, heuristics, metaheuristics, and simulation models.
Dr. Mauricio AcunaGuest Editor
Prof. Dr. John Sessions
Prof. Dr. Andres Weintraub
Co-Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Forests is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- operations research
- optimization
- forest management
- forest operations
- wood and biomass supply chain optimization
- mathematical modeling
- heuristics
- metaheuristics
- simulation