SADfLOR

General System description

System name: SADfLOR - Sistema de apoio à decisão em recursos florestais (Portuguese for Forest Resources' Decision Support System)

Acronym: SADfLOR

Brief overview

SADfLOR is set of decision support tools for forest harvest scheduling designed for the Portuguese forest specificities. This system encompasses a management information system (MIS) in forest resources (INfLOR), a flexible prescription writer for the most important Portuguese species (SAGfLOR), and a set of models that allow using different methods for solving specific problems (DECfLOR).

Scope of the system

SADfLOR has been designed to provide harvest scheduling plans to the most important Portuguese forest ecosystems. Namely:

1. Maritime pine (Pinus pinaster, Ait.)
2. Eucalypt (Eucalyptus globulus, Labill)
3. Cork oak (Quercus suber, L.)

The user is able to define the silviculture models for each species, generate appropriate prescriptions and solve the resulting management problem according to a variety of methods. It is further possible to visualize the decisions along time in an embedded GIS visualization tool.

System origin

• Developed by the Forest Research Center at the Institute of Agronomy (Centro de Estudos Florestais no Instituto Superior de Agronomia [1]). The research and development teams included the Forest Service, the forest industry, the Conservation Agency, forest landowner associations, and other non-governmental organizations.
• SADfLOR 2.0 was launched in 1999.
• how was it developed
• is it a commercial product
• does it have real-life application cases

Support for specific issues

SADfLOR main objective is optimising harvest scheduling accounting spatial constraints.

Support for specific thematic areas of a problem type

• Silvicultural
• Certification
• Development choices / land use zoning
• Policy/intervention alternatives

Capability to support decision making phases

• Intelligence:

  The SADfLOR system enables the forest manager to become conscious to the spatial harvesting constraints existing in forests and the possible solving alternatives.

• Design:

  SAGfLOR tool analyse the possible alternatives within the constraints selected by users.

• Choice:

  DECfLOR tool allows to compare the SAGfLOR's prescriptions, driving the manager to choose among the best solutions.

• Monitor:

  A monitor step has not been implemented.

Related systems

SADfLOR is made up of the following tools:

• INfLOR
• SAGfLOR
• DECfLOR

Data and data models

Typical spatial extent of application

The SADfLOR set of tools was designed to be used at a forest scale.

Forest data input

Inventory data, more carefully described in the main INfLOR page.

Type of information input from user (via GUI)

Some information about treatment scheduling and optimization techniques must be entered in the SAGfLOR module.

Models

Forest models

Growth and yield models for maritime pine, [[Category:Eucalyptus globulus|eucalyptus] and cork oak are used in the SAGfLOR module

Decision Support

Definition of management interventions

Time of harvest, forestation, and thinnings (See DECfLOR for more details).

Typical temporal scale of application

Strategic level.

Types of decisions supported

• Management level
  • strategic decisions
  • administrative decisions
  • operating control decisions
• Management function
• planning decisions
  • organizing decisions
  • command decisions
  • control decisions
  • coordination decisions
• decision making situation
  • unilateral
  • collegial
  • Bargaining / participative decision making

Decision-making processes and models

• Linear programming
• DualPlan
• Simulated Annealing
• Genetic Algorithms
• Tabu Search

Output

Types of outputs

Outputs are presented with a GIS visualization tool, and also as graphics and tables.

A 3D visualization tool was also developed but this is not in the main SADfLOR package.

Spatial analysis capabilities

Spatial visualizations are showed at the beginning of the simulation and in the results presentation.

Spatial constraints are accounted in the optimization module.

System

System requirements

• Pentium processor above 100 MHz (Pentium II or III recommended)
• 64 MB RAM
• 100 Mbytes of hard-drive space
• CD ROM reader
• OS Windows 95/98 ou Windows NT

Architecture and major DSS components

All SADfLOR modules were developed using Microsoft® Visual Basic™.

Usage

Research level.

Computational limitations

Computation with too many management units and constraints became too long.

User interface

SADfLOR has a GUI friendly and easy to understand.

Documentation and support

Some User's Manuals have been published (see). SADfLOR was further presented and discussed in (see).

Installation

Simple Windows guided installation.

References

External resources

• BORGES, J. G., A. FALCÃO, C. MIRAGAIA, P. MARQUES and M. MARQUES (2003). "A decision support system for forest resources management in Portugal". In: G. J. ARTHAUD and T. M. BARRETT (Eds.) System Analysis in Forest Resources. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Managing Forest Ecosystems Vol. 7: 155-164.
• MARQUES S. et J.G. BORGES (2007): Relatório de execução do Sistema de Gestão de Informação INfLOR 2.1. GEGREN Grupo de Economia e Gestão dos Recursos Naturais. Documento Técnico nº 02/07. 43pp.
• FALCÃO A. et J.G. BORGES (1999): SAGfLOR 2.0: Manual de Utilização. Simulador de Alternativas de Gestão. GEGREF Grupo de Economia e Gestão de Recursos Florestais. Documento No 5. 50pp.
• REYNOLDS, K.M., M. TWERY, M. J. LEXER, H. VACIK, D. RAY, G. SHAO and J. G. BORGES (2008): "Decision support systems in natural resource management". In: F. BURSTEIN and C. HOLSAPPLE(Ed.) Handbook on Decision Support Systems. Springer, International Handbooks on Information Systems Series, Handbook on Decision Support System 2: 499-534
• Barreiro, S., J. Garcia-Gonzalo, J. G. Borges, M. Tomé and S. Marques 2013. SADfLOR Tutorial ? A Web-based Forest and Natural Resources Decision Support System (Work in progress), FORCHANGE, ISA, Lisboa, 39 p.