Using GIS-based multicriteria evaluation and path optimization for effective forest field inventory

The inventory practices concerning non-industrial privately owned forests are undergoing significant changes in Finland. In the future, the collection of information will be increasingly carried out by the means of remote sensing technologies, which is bound to have strong implications for the traditional and extensive field inventory practices. This study presents a new method for determining the importance of individual forest stands to the field inventory, including a technique for using this information to calculate efficient field inventory tours. The proposed method is essentially based on expert knowledge modeling and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), which enable the production of an inventory importance map for any forest area. In a similar fashion, it is possible to produce a traversability map for the particular area, which serves as a basis for inventory tour planning. The method incorporates an optimization technique, which can be used to determine the forest stands encompassing the highest overall inventory utility and the optimal traversal path for inventorying them under the presence of time constraint. Preliminary tests on the method have been carried out in a case study area located in Kuortane, Finland. The results of the tests suggest that the method has a lot of application potential, but more information and experience is needed about the new forest inventory system for further development of the method.