SADMVMC

General System description

System name: Sistema de apoio á decisión para montes veciñais en man común

Acronym: SADMVMC

Brief overview

This is a web application that enables the simulation and comparison of silviculture alternatives in the Galician (northwestern Spain) common private property land, providing a management schedule and an estimated budget.

Scope of the system

The SADMVMC try to help landowners when considering the different afforestation options of their properties, providing a management schedule based on the plot features and the management objectives. It includes technical-economic models developed for the most of the species normally used in Galician woodlands, as:

• Maritime pine (Pinus pinaster Ait.)
• Monterey pine (Pinus radiata D.Don)
• Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.)
• Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco)
• Sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.)
• Pedunculate oak (Quercus robur L.)
• Northern red oak (Quercus rubra L.)
• Shining gum (Eucalyptus nitens H.Deane & Maiden)

The user is enabled to provide their plot data using both a WebGIS or a GUI, and then choosing some of the land and management features proposed, the possible management alternatives and their economic evaluation are presented.

System origin

This DSS is being developed by the research group GI-1716 at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, during the current year (2009).

It is not still published, but it is going to be a free-access web-tool.

Support for specific thematic areas of a problem type

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

Capability to support decision making phases

• Intelligence phase:

It collects information about the ownership features and the user goals and criteria.

• Design:

According to the user chosen land features and goals it shows the feasible alternatives and their evaluation.

• Choice:

I belongs to the user the final choice of the best alternative, according or not to the previous criteria chosen.

• Monitor:

It does not foresee to have any monitor phase.

Data and data models

Typical spatial extent of application

Land ownership defined.

Type of information input from user (via GUI)

Plot and management features (area, slope, actual vegetation, wild cattle appearance,...).

Models

Forest models

Yield and economic yield models.

Decision Support

Definition of management interventions

The manager is able to define some of the management variables, like time of harvest, plantations, thinnings..., always under site and species constraints.

Typical temporal scale of application

The application level is both operational and tactical planning. It offers information from the each year management operations, means, inputs, outputs, costs and benefits, to the whole forest rotation evaluation.

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

• Logic modeling
• Operations research modeling
• Business modeling
• Simulation
• Multiple criteria decision

Output

Types of outputs

The application provides scheduling summaries, charts, tables and a visualization tool, appearing all of them as part of the web page. Also, it is possible to generate some other results in other formats (.txt, .ods, .xls, .kml, .pdf) in order to download it and use it with other software.

System

System requirements

• Operating Systems: multi-platform.
• Other software needed: any web browser (Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, Internet Explorer...).
• Development status: in development.

Architecture and major DSS components

Desktop client-server, web based. The DSS was developed using PHP, MySQL, JavaScript and MapServer.

Usage

The usage of this DSS is oriented to the landowner. As its title reminds it is developed to help private common property landowners to manage their future forests.

User interface

The interface tries to be friendly and easy to use, always reminding that it is not oriented for high informatics knowledge users, even not for high forestry knowledge users.

Installation

• Prerequisite knowledge: user only has to know the use of a web browser.
• Cost: free.