Capsis

General System description

System name: Capsis - Computer Aided Projections of Strategies In Silviculture

Acronym: Capsis

Brief overview

Capsis is a software platform aimed at simulation growth and silvicultural treatments for decision making in forest management, forestry research (hypotheses testing, model evaluation) and educational purposes.

Scope of the system

• tool encourages decision maker to discover new problems or opportunities by exposing to new information or results
• tool helps decision makers in recognizing upcoming problems for which solutions have been developed previously
• tool allows decision maker to actively create new knowledge when faced with a new problem and to develop novel solutions
• tool allows decision maker to capture knowledge, making it available to decision makers who are seeking solutions from previously solved problems

System origin

• The first version was developped by Philippe Dreyfus between 1993-1999
• Since 1999 the platform is developed by François de Coligny, joined by Samuel Dufour in 2008

ETÇAP is in this moment ready to be used in some forest management planning units (Kızılcasu-Cide; Gürgendağ-Edremit; Honaz-Denizli and Akseki-İbradı) in Turkey and will be soon adapted to other Turkish regions after evaluation by the Forest Management Department in Turkish Forest Service

Support for specific issues

Inventory compilation, harvest scheduling, timber-water-carbon production or prediction, soil protection, yield prediction, biodiversity conservation, spatial planning

Support for specific thematic areas of a problem type

• Timber cruising
• Silvicultural
• Certification
• Conservation
• Development choices / land use zoning
• Policy/intervention alternatives
• Spatial layout of interventions

Capability to support decision making phases

(NOTE I do not quite know what to do with this, as I do not understand it myself, although it seems related to system use)

(Click here to see a more detailed explanation)

• Intelligence (The current conditions of the forest can be analysed with various management strategies to achieve targets and a spatially configured harvest schedules be prepared.)
• Design (The simulation tool runs the different management possibilities among the restrictions imposed by the input data to understand forest dynamics.

The optimization tool projects the current state of a forest into a target forest under various management prescriptions with objectives and constraints.)

• Choice (Heuristic tools are used in order to ensure the spatial layout of the best management option chosen by the manager. )
• Monitor (Not implemented.)

Related systems

• AROBEM (empirical growth and yield model inherent in ETÇAP)
• ETÇAPKlasik
• ETÇAPSimulation
• ETÇAPOptimization
• ETÇAPKombineOptimization

Data and data models

Typical spatial extent of application

The normal spatial application level of ETÇAP is the forest level with various stands. Yet the spatial resolution of the model is the stand, the smallest identifiable unit of forest area.

Forest data input

ETÇAP input information are inventory data that can be imported from files with .xls or .mdb extensions with a specific format. The input data required depends on the characteristics of the stand. Three groups of data are needed for the model; the current area of the stands generated by a GIS software, current status of each stand measured with inventory sheets for per area growth and yield characteristics (in each plot: the plot size, diameters of all stems, ages of some stems, age and dominant height for a number of stems, and ten-last-years growth for some trees) and the other support tables (volume table, empirical yield table, site index table, product assortment table and financial value table) characteristics In order to allow spatial layout of a harvest schedule for visualization and generation of maps, compartments, forest stratifications and analysis areas have to be set and related to each polygon (a sub-compartment =stand) with geographic files

If necessary describe other types of required data (economic, social)

Type of information input from user (via GUI)

Forest management strategies with specific objectives and constraints have to be developed as shown in the user interface. More than one goal may be selected to address multi-objective management of forests. The indicated targets as management objectives are both yield-economic goals and conservation targets.

Models

Forest models

Models implemented in ETÇAP simulate silvicultural treatment schedules according to the stand variables previously given based on both optimization and simulation techniques. Currently ETÇAP has implemented models for the management of either even-aged, uneven-aged, pures or mixed forest stands of any species that have the growth and yield data

Social models

-Not available yet

Decision Support

Definition of management interventions

The user lays out the alternative management prescriptions as sequences of silvicultural treatments; how, when (time of harvest, regeneration methods, thinnings, etc.) and where (a stand or a contiguous group of stands) the treatments could be conducted in order to achieve the previously chosen management targets.

Typical temporal scale of application

Strategic and tactical planning

Types of decisions supported

• Management level
  • Strategic decisions
  • Operating control decisions
• Management function

Decision-making processes and models

• Traditional simulation
• Simulated annealing
• Random ascent
• Linear programming

Output

Types of outputs

• stand level table and graphical outputs showing the temporal changes of its parameters
• stand level 2D viewer
• stand level 3D viewer

Spatial analysis capabilities

• facilitates links to GIS with geotools java library

Abilities to address interdisciplinary, multi-scaled, and political issues

Evaluate interactions between different basic information types (biophysical, economic, social).

System

System requirements

• Operating Systems: Linux / Windows / Mac Os X
• Other software needed : Java 1.6

Architecture and major DSS components

Desktop application

Usage

Research level use

User interface

In-hose developed GUI is available

Documentation and support

See Capsis web site : http://www.inra.fr/capsis

Installation

• a Free and OpenSource version is available on the web