The document discusses how the University of Washington is using IBM analytics solutions to help the state department of natural resources better manage its extensive forest road network. The solution helps optimize timber harvesting routes, reduce unnecessary roads to minimize environmental impact, and increase timber revenues while lowering costs. It allows modeling complex problems involving thousands of forest units and roads, identifying opportunities to retire 15% of roads without impacting harvests. This provides environmental benefits like reduced sediment in streams and potential habitat improvements for salmon and other wildlife.

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Sándor F. Tóth
Associate Professor of
Natural Resource Informatics
University of Washington
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.
Business challenge
How could the College of the
Environment at the University of
Washington help a state department
to manage its extensive forest road
network with minimum environmental
impact?
Transformation
An IBM optimization solution is
helping the College design smarter
routes for timber harvests, reduce the
size of the forest road network, and
minimize the environmental impact of
forestry operations.
University of Washington
Harnessing the power of
IBM Analytics to enable
smarter, more sustainable
management of forest roads
“Problems that were
intractable a few
years ago can now be
solved in seconds with
IBM Analytics.”
Sándor F. Tóth
Associate Professor of
Natural Resource Informatics
University of Washington
Business benefits:
Drives
greener, more cost-efficient
management of forest
resources
2%
potential increase in timber
revenues through more
efficient harvesting
15%
of the forest roads could be
retired, reducing impact on
salmon and other wildlife

2. 2
Seeking ways
to optimize the
management of
forest roads
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.
Sándor F. Tóth, Associate Professor
of Natural Resource Informatics at
the University of Washington, takes
up the story, “I have been working on
combinatorial optimization problems that
arise in natural resource management
since about 2002. When I started
out, computational optimization was
practically in its infancy: the software
available back then was only capable of
solving small-scale problems. We had
no way of calculating really complex
algorithms because we lacked the
required computational power.
“For example, we had no way of
answering key questions such as
‘How can we schedule maintenance,
reconstruction and other required
activities in the forest?’ ‘How much is this
road contributing to the level of sediment
in the forest’s streams and rivers, and how
will this affect the natural habitat for fish?’
‘Can we retire part of the forest road
network while at the same time making
timber harvests more efficient?’”

3. 3
“In the last few years, the advances
in optimization technology have
been tremendous, so we decided to
look at more powerful, cutting-edge
computational tools that could help us
solve complex problems and advise our
government partners on better ways to
manage their forestry operations. This,
ultimately, would contribute to keeping our
forests more sustainable, and preserving
the environment for local people, visitors
and wildlife.”
Cutting-edge
technology shapes
smarter decisions
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.
Sándor F. Tóth explains, “We tested our
integrated model for one of the largest
independent planning districts that our
government partner manages, which has
about 5,000 management units and over
25,000 road segments.
“Using IBM CPLEX ILOG Optimizer
and Concert Technology, we were able
to model these issues to a very high
level in about five and a half hours – an
amazing result given the massive size
of the problem.”

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Solution components
• IBM® ILOG® CPLEX® Optimizer with
Concert Technology
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© Copyright IBM Corporation 2015, IBM Corporation, 1 New Orchard Road, Armonk, NY 10504 U.S.A. Produced in the United States of America, December 2015.
IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, CPLEX, and ILOG are trademarks of International Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks of
IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at “Copyright and trademark information” at ibm.com/legal/us/en/copytrade.shtml.
This document is current as of the initial date of publication and may be changed by IBM at any time. Not all offerings are available in every country in which IBM operates. The performance data and client
examples cited are presented for illustrative purposes only. Actual performance results may vary depending on specific configurations and operating conditions. THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT
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Chipping away
costs and
environmental
damage
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.
“This has been a win-win situation
for our government partner because
the fewer roads they have to manage,
the cheaper and more sustainable
it becomes. Furthermore, the public
is happier, as people don’t like to be
surrounded by roads and logging trucks
when hiking or enjoying the outdoors,”
says Sándor F. Tóth.
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.
Sándor F. Tóth explains: “The erosion
of forest roads increases the amount of
sediment that is delivered into the forest
stream system – and sediment has an
impact on fish populations, especially
salmon. By retiring the roads that we
don’t need, we can reduce sediment
delivery and minimize the impact on
wildlife in our rivers and streams.”
He concludes, “Problems that were
completely intractable when I was in
graduate school can now be solved in
a matter of seconds with solutions like
ours. Leveraging IBM Analytics has been
a transformative experience for us, and
one that we are happy to share with
other organizations that wish to achieve
similar goals.”
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