Developing gis based decision support system for planning transportation of forest products

Transportation of forest products is a complex problem that requires evaluation of many alternative routes. This indicates the necessity of using computer-assisted methods in planning transportation of forest products and systematically searching for the optimum route. In this study, Geographical Information System (GIS) based decision support system was developed to decide the optimum route which minimizes the transportation cost of forest products. The study area consists of Paşalar, Sarnıç ve Turfal Forest Enterprise Chiefs in Mustafakemalpaşa Directories of Forest Enterprises, located in Bursa Regional Forestry Directorate. There are five forest depots in the study area. In this study, firstly, the forest roads, rural roads, highways, the landing locations where forest products were bunched to be loaded into logging trucks, and forest depots were digitized by using ArcGIS 10.2 software. Then, network database was generated based on the digitized data by using ArcCatalog module under ArcGIS 10.2 environment. Finally, the optimum routes, providing the most economic transportation from landings to forest depots, were determined by using Network Analyst extension working under ArcMap module. Also, road sections located in inaccessible areas such landslide, mudslide risk were disregarded in the network analysis, therefore, the optimum route that provides the safest path was determined. As essential renewable natural resources, in order forests to meet the demands of today's and future's generations and to be effectively preserved, they have to be managed by modern methods which ensures sustainability and optimum productivity. When the digital database of all the forested areas in Turkey are generated and especially all of the current road network is stored into the computers after digitized, the decision support system that will be produced in this study as an example of modern methods will be able to be implemented in national wide scale, and therefore, forest products transportation will be planned in a faster and more effective way.