Design and development of a decision support system for forest management planning with multiple objectives

The purpose of this research was to design, develop, and implement a procedure for forest management planning with multiple objectives. Within the context of this primary objective were the secondary objectives of 1) conducting basic research in mulitobjective optimization, and 2) developing a computer implementation of these results, with a goal of eventual use on microcomputers.

Our research in multiobjective optimization resulted in a new algorithmic approach that links two previously unrelated techniques. We refer to this new technique as an “implicit/explicit” approach to multiobjective decision making. It synergistically combines the implicit utility function method with an iterative devlopment of the decision maker's explicit utility function. This results in a robust. interactive algorithm that requires a relatively light information burden of the decision maker. The discussion of the implicit/explicit algorithm concludes with a collection of results supporting its viability.

We have applied the implicit/explicit algorithm in the development of FORMAN (FORest Management plANning system). FORMAN is a computer package designed specifically for forest management planning with multiple objectives, when the decision maker wishes to optimize an unspecified utility function over a linear constraint set.

We conclude with a description of sample FORMAN use; and discuss directions for future research.