Timber harvest scheduling in a fuzzy decision environment

Abstract

Linear programming is a widely used tool for timber harvest scheduling in North America. However, some potential problems related to infeasible harvest schedules, overly optimistic objective function values, and the need to strictly satisfy all constraints included in deterministic model formulations have been raised. This paper describes a fuzzy approach for explicitly recognizing the imprecise nature of the harvest flow constraints usually included in harvest scheduling models. The objective function and selected constraints are viewed as soft, and satisfactory solutions are derived and discussed for several scenarios. An illustrative sample problem is presented to demonstrate the methodology, and a comparison with solutions derived from a traditional linear programming model is presented.