July 2013 - July 2015

SADRI
Models and Decision Support Systems for Adressing Risk and Uncertainty in Forest Planning.

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University of Lisbon_ISA Instituto Superior de Agronomia (ISA)

University of Lisbon_FCUL Fundação da Faculdade de Ciências (FCUL)

University of Evora_UE Universidade de Evora (UE)

INTRANET

WP2: Optimisation techniques for selecting adaptive forest management AFM strategies

Description:

The overall objective of this task is to develop methods to evaluate and select among many options the adaptive forest management strategies that may better address relevant environmental and socioeconomic objectives in a context of global change. The challenge and the novelty lies in developing methods that (i) take appropriately into account the effects of the risk and uncertainties implied by climate change, different hazards and key policy drivers over the long time-horizon characteristic of forest management planning, (ii) take appropriately into account the spatial interdependence and interaction of supplies of forest goods and service , (iii) provide management options that may adapt to changing circumstances (iv) provide information for trade-off analysis between objectives.

The task analyses state-of-the-art methods for optimal decision making under risk and uncertainty in forestry - e.g. non-linear and linear programming, stochastic dynamic programming, markov chains, and heuristic methods - and develops further these methods for the use in AFM.

Techniques for ecosystems’ scenario analysis that may help assess trade-offs between multiple objectives will be used (i.e. Feasible Goal Method and Interactive Decision Maps). The approach is based on the integration of diverse data and mathematical models as well as on the application of interactive visualization of the Pareto frontier. This is instrumental to help stakeholders to better understand the problem, specify the preferred combination of the objectives values (the goal), and compute the associated decision alternatives.

Objectives:

• Develop strategic and multiple-objective stand-level management planning models that address risk and uncertainty.
• Develop strategic, multiple-objective forest management planning models that address global change scenarios.
• Develop spatial forest management optimisation models that integrate timber supply and environmental objectives in a context of market and climate change.
• Analyse trade-offs between multiple objectives.