IBM Case Studies Harnessing the power of IBM Analytics to enable smarter, more sustainable management of forest roads

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	Harnessing the power of IBM Analytics to enable smarter, more sustainable management of forest roads IBM

Harnessing the power of IBM Analytics to enable smarter, more sustainable management of forest roads

IBM

Technology Category	Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics
Applicable Industries	Education
Use Cases	Predictive Maintenance
Services	Data Science Services
Challenge	The College of the Environment at the University of Washington collaborates with many external companies and agencies, including a US state government department that manages approximately 2.1 million acres of working forest on state trust lands. The department also manages upwards of 15,000 miles of forest roads statewide, which are essential to enable machinery and people to reach remote areas of the forest for timber harvesting, maintenance or recreation purposes. The College is tasked with researching the best, most sustainable ways to support the department in its complex mission to maintain the forest road network and help timber companies optimize their harvesting processes – while keeping costs and environmental impact to a minimum. Read More
About Customer	The College of the Environment at the University of Washington studies the earth’s atmosphere, land and water systems, and humanity’s impact on them. It also researches engineering and technological solutions to environmental problems, and the impact of government policies on environmental change. The College collaborates with many external companies and agencies, including a US state government department that manages approximately 2.1 million acres of working forest on state trust lands. The department also manages upwards of 15,000 miles of forest roads statewide, which are essential to enable machinery and people to reach remote areas of the forest for timber harvesting, maintenance or recreation purposes. Read More
Solution	The College chose to implement IBM ILOG CPLEX Optimizer with Concert Technology, a mathematical optimization solution that enables researchers to build efficient optimization models and then solve highly complex problems to identify the best solutions within the given constraints. In this case, the aim was to integrate the existing models used to schedule the timber harvests with a new model for scheduling forest road maintenance. This would allow the government and timber companies to coordinate and optimize the timing of the harvest and the maintenance of forest roads – not only to save money on operations, but also to assess whether it was necessary to keep maintaining the entire forest road network, or if some of the roads could be retired. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics

Applicable Industries

Education

Use Cases

Predictive Maintenance

Services

Data Science Services

Challenge

The College of the Environment at the University of Washington collaborates with many external companies and agencies, including a US state government department that manages approximately 2.1 million acres of working forest on state trust lands. The department also manages upwards of 15,000 miles of forest roads statewide, which are essential to enable machinery and people to reach remote areas of the forest for timber harvesting, maintenance or recreation purposes. The College is tasked with researching the best, most sustainable ways to support the department in its complex mission to maintain the forest road network and help timber companies optimize their harvesting processes – while keeping costs and environmental impact to a minimum.

About Customer

The College of the Environment at the University of Washington studies the earth’s atmosphere, land and water systems, and humanity’s impact on them. It also researches engineering and technological solutions to environmental problems, and the impact of government policies on environmental change. The College collaborates with many external companies and agencies, including a US state government department that manages approximately 2.1 million acres of working forest on state trust lands. The department also manages upwards of 15,000 miles of forest roads statewide, which are essential to enable machinery and people to reach remote areas of the forest for timber harvesting, maintenance or recreation purposes.

Solution

The College chose to implement IBM ILOG CPLEX Optimizer with Concert Technology, a mathematical optimization solution that enables researchers to build efficient optimization models and then solve highly complex problems to identify the best solutions within the given constraints. In this case, the aim was to integrate the existing models used to schedule the timber harvests with a new model for scheduling forest road maintenance. This would allow the government and timber companies to coordinate and optimize the timing of the harvest and the maintenance of forest roads – not only to save money on operations, but also to assess whether it was necessary to keep maintaining the entire forest road network, or if some of the roads could be retired.

Impact #1	The findings delivered by the IBM solution revealed that it will possible to retire approximately 15 percent of the total length of the road network and still increase its net present value by up to two percent.
Impact #2	Thanks to the IBM Analytics solution, the College can also start modeling the location, orientation, slope, soil type and vegetation cover of each road segment, which enables it to estimate how much each road segment is contributing to sediment delivery downstream.

Impact #1

The findings delivered by the IBM solution revealed that it will possible to retire approximately 15 percent of the total length of the road network and still increase its net present value by up to two percent.

Impact #2

Thanks to the IBM Analytics solution, the College can also start modeling the location, orientation, slope, soil type and vegetation cover of each road segment, which enables it to estimate how much each road segment is contributing to sediment delivery downstream.

Benefit #1	2% potential increase in timber revenues through more efficient harvesting
Benefit #2	15% of the forest roads could be retired, reducing impact on salmon and other wildlife

Benefit #1

2% potential increase in timber revenues through more efficient harvesting

Benefit #2

15% of the forest roads could be retired, reducing impact on salmon and other wildlife

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Overview

Harnessing the power of IBM Analytics to enable smarter, more sustainable management of forest roads

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit