Search results for "Least cost"
showing 3 items of 3 documents
Forest accessibility, Madonie mountains (northern Sicily, Italy): implementing a GIS decision support system
2021
Valorisation and sustainable exploitation of woody biomass from cultivation interventions might be an important opportunity to track alternative development trails for rural communities in natural protected areas. The governance of Mediterranean protected areas is characterized by overlapping, sometimes conflicting institutions, stakeholders and regulations, causing negative impacts on decision-making processes. We present an open source GIS-based decision support system tool for mapping forest accessibility and optimizing woody biomass extraction. Two models were implemented to support forest managers during the decision-making process in designing and managing wood-energy supply chains. T…
Improving drinking water treatment without tariff impact: the Spanish case study
2017
Abstract Water is essential for our lives and activities. Everyone can drink good quality water, the question is whether they have access to it in the first place. Water quality and its treatment depend on the water source. This treatment has costs that users have to pay in the water tariff. It is very important to establish a water tariff that permits the best water treatment and has a low impact on the users. Cost functions are a useful tool to predict costs before an implementation or improvement. This article, using three easy steps (analysis, obtaining costs and modification of the water tariff) proposes improving water purification treatment using cost functions in order to find the b…
Comparison of methods to model species habitat networks for decision-making in nature conservation : the case of the wildcat in southern Belgium
2020
Facing the loss of biodiversity caused by landscape fragmentation, implementation of ecological networks to connect habitats is an important biodiversity conservation issue. It is necessary to develop easily reproducible methods to identify and prioritize actions to maintain or restore ecological corridors. To date, several competing methods are used with recurrent debate on which is best and if expert-based approaches can replace data-driven models. We compared three methods: knowledge-driven (expert based), data-driven (based on species distribution model), and a mixed approach. We quantified their differences in habitat and corridor mapping, and prioritizations of landscape elements in t…