Forest management decision support system for forest plantations in brazila multicriteria approach

Resumen

Forests have been the primary source of fibers, food, water, biodiversity, energy, recreation, scenic beauty, and ecological services. Forest management science encompasses the challenge of working with the forests in a way that produces required benefits now without compromising future benefits and choices. The concept of optimized forest management has become broader in recent decades. Pressure toward social, economic, and environmental sustainability push up research to cover these demands by improving models, introducing new methods, and adding holistic planning approaches in Forest Management Support System (FMDSS). The conflicts that arise between the desire to consume natural resources and their preservation make the Multicriteria Decision Theory necessary. Brazil, one of the ten largest timber producers in the world, has the second-largest forest cover on the planet. It also uses optimization models that represent the growth of forests integrated with decision support systems that support managers in their decisions. However, forest planning models and applied Decision Support Systems are not uniformly developed and available for all types of problems encountered in the country. Brazilian forest plantation managers have to face many conflicts when continuously seeking gains regarding efficiency (higher productivity at lower costs) and efficacy (higher profits with minimum social and environmental impacts). Leading producing countries on timber, pulp and fiberboard have their managers constantly interacting to fine-tune industry-processing demands vis-a-vis the demands of highly productive fast-growing forest plantations. The decision process, in such cases, seeks a compromise that accommodates frequent conflicting objectives. Therefore, this research work aims to develop a Forest Management Decision Support System (FMDSS) based on Multicriteria Decision Making (MCDM) techniques to support Group Decision Making (GDM) in the diversified context of forest plantations in Brazil. Explicitly, the objective is developing a set of models to optimize forest management embedded in a DDS to meet the needs of the decision-makers of the different types of forest plantation organization that operate in Brazil. This set of models encompasses multicriteria mathematical programming models, processes, and data models structured in such a way to be versatile enough to support interactive group decision-making. FORSYS, an FP0804 European COST action, a representative case study that could contribute to the understanding of the use of FMDSS worldwide, was used to outline the forest managers main concerns. Also, a Sao Paulo forest restoration case exposed essential guidelines regarding Knowledge Management (KM) design to support a robust FMDSS adequately. A generalizable mathematical programming model was developed and embedded in a Forest Management Group Decision Support System (FMGDSS), called Romero©. The FMGDSS was established following the multicriteria decision theory rigorously and the guidelines provided by the two previously mentioned case studies. Another case study illustrates how Romero© can support large-scale multi-stakeholder’s decision processes. A vertically integrated pulp company situation was simulated to provide a real scenario where forest managers tend to shorten the rotations due to the usually high-interest rates practiced in the Brazilian banking system, while the industrial managers tend to ask for larger ones due to the positive correlation between age and wood density. Romero© demonstrated its abilities to support interaction among stakeholders that have diverse expectations regarding forest management. Expressly, the hypothesis that mill managers initially have that older ages rotation could improve mill production was not confirmed. Romero©’s support was essential to consider and inspect all aspects of the solution; it was an information-based decision-making process as preconized by literature. An overall conclusion is that Romero© development potentially contributes to the forest management research applying MCDM techniques and compromise programming to industrial forest plantation problems. Furthermore, through the case study application, Romero demonstrated that strategic scenario analysis is still a key tool to evaluate future impacts of short-term decisions.