Nils Egil Søvde
Research Scientist
Biography
I'm a researcher that would like to use remote sensing data to guess what is out there. Preferably using high resolution for all of Norway.
My background is from industrial mathematics.
Authors
Morgane Merlin Rasmus Astrup Nicolas Cattaneo Nils Egil Søvde Barry Gardiner Tommaso LocatelliAbstract
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Forestry in coastal Norway has traditionally been a marginal activity with a low annual harvest rate. However, the region is now faced with large areas of spruce plantations that will reach harvest maturity within the next 25 years. Due to the poor infrastructure in the region, the current challenge is to harvest the maturing spruce plantations at an acceptable cost. Hence, there is considerable interest both from the forest sector and politicians to invest in infrastructure that can provide the basis for profitable forest sector development in coastal Norway. This paper presents a mathematical optimization model for timber transportation from stump to industry. The main decision variables are location of quays, upgrade of public road links, the length of new forest roads, and when the investments should happen. The main objective is to provide decision support for prioritization of infrastructure investments. The optimization model is combined with a dynamical forest resource model, providing details on available volumes and costs. A case study for coastal Norway is presented and solved to optimality. The instance includes 10 counties comprising more than 200 municipalities with forest resources, 53 possible new quays for timber export and 916 public road links that also can be upgraded. Compared with a no investment case, the optimal solution improved the objective by 23%. The study shows that consistent, informative and good analyses can be performed to evaluate trade-offs, prioritization, time and order of investment, and cost saving potentials of infrastructure investments in the forest industry. The solution seems reasonable based on present infrastructure and state of the forest.
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This paper presents an optimization model designed to find productivity functions for timber forwarding. Timber forwarding or skidding has for some 25 years been calculated using shortest path formulations on grid networks. Unfortunately, few productivity studies relate to such grids. Here, an inverse shortest path problem is presented, basically panning out costs on the grid based on point cost estimates. The formulation is tested using point cost estimates from the national forest inventories of Norway, together with a terrain model and other public spatial data (e.g. roads, water). The problem is optimized using the metaheuristic variable neighborhood search. The results of the test cases were achieved in reasonable time, and indicate that part of the solution space might be convex. The productivity function found for one of the test cases was used to create a variable forwarding cost map of the case area.
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The Cableway Location Problem (CLP) is a facility location problem usually studied as a part of a hierarchical approach for large cable yarding systems outside of Europe. Small adaptable cable yarding systems are used in Europe. This increases the number of possible landing sites and makes the layout problem hard to solve to optimality. Here, two approaches are presented that solve the novel European CLP (E-CLP). The methods are tested on several generated cases and one real world case. The lateral yarding distance is introduced in the cost calculations to improve the quality of the solutions.
Authors
Nils Egil SøvdeAbstract
Cable yarding systems are commonly used in steep or difficult terrain and require suitable landing sites. This work describes two algorithms that calculate the suitability of roads and areas for landing site use. The algorithms were tested against real world data. The results show that simple algorithms are sufficient to make stable, useful estimates that are comparable with human site placements. These techniques can be used to guide forest road network planning or reuse of existing roads.
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Variable retention harvesting is acknowledged as a cost-effective conservation measure, but previous studies have focused on the environmental value and planning cost. In this study, a model is presented for optimizing harvesting cost using a high resolution map generated from airborne laser scanning data. The harvesting cost optimization model is used to calculate the objective value of different scenarios. By comparing the objective values, better estimates of the opportunity cost of woodland key habitats are found. The model can be used by a forest manager when evaluating what silvicultural treatments to implement or as an input for improving the nature reserve selection problem for woodland key habitats or retention patches. The model was tested on four real-world cases, and the results indicate that terrain transportation costs vary more than reported in the literature and that it may be worthwhile to divide the opportunity cost into its direct and indirect components.
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Nils Egil SøvdeAbstract
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Nils Egil SøvdeAbstract
Ground based systems are the main approach used for off-road timber transportation throughout the world. Estimates of terrain transportation costs are required for several forest planning problems and for assessment of harvesting contracts and forest land values. Methods for these calculations can be categorized into two groups. Methods based on average transportation distance predate computers, are analytical, and based on manual calculations. Network methods are based on a digital raster representation and are solved with numerical computations. Here, the two categories are compared and linked. Analytical methods in the literature have been limited to flat terrain and including detail is difficult. The network method can be extended to include uneven terrain or detailed input data.
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The ground-based harvesting system consisting of a harvester and a forwarder is the dominant harvesting system in parts of the world, due to its high productivity. Both machines usually operate along extraction trails, and are equipped with cranes that can reach some distance from the extraction trail. In this work we optimize the layout of an extraction trail network by considering how terrain topography influences the cost of forwarding. Given the complexity of finding optimal machine trails for terrain transportation, traditional optimization methods might be limited due to the problem size. In this study, the optimization is done with a greedy constructive heuristic and a Greedy Randomized Adaptive Search Procedure (GRASP) metaheuristic, and the results of the two solution techniques are compared. Both the greedy heuristic and the GRASP metaheuristic were examined for a semi-random terrain and a smooth cone-shaped terrain, and provided useable extraction trail layouts in terms of how a forest machine operates on slopes. The objective value of the solution found by the GRASP metaheuristic was 5.6% better than the greedy heuristic in the semi-random terrain, and 2.3% better in the cone-shaped terrain. The result of this study showed that the GRASP metaheuristic is useful for finding feasible routes in the terrain, increasing efficiency. The method could be useful for planning feasible routes in the terrain, thereby increasing efficiency, or for acquiring a better estimate of the cost of terrain transport in price setting.
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Nils Egil SøvdeAbstract
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