Forestry Applications

In 2012, a Forestry Special Interest Group (FSIG) was founded within the Canadian Operational Research Society (CORS). Besides a general commitment to promoting the application of operational research (OR) to forest management and forest products industry problems, the FSIG has two concrete mandates: organizing the forestry cluster at the annual CORS conference, and managing the editorial process for forestry-themed special issues of INFOR. The FSIG has been very successful in the first of these two mandates, with record attendance at the forestry cluster over the last four years, hosting of several special sessions, financial and in-kind support from the NSERC Strategic Network on Value Chain Optimization (VCO), and the inauguration of the David Martell Student Paper Prize in Forestry (DMSPPF). This is the first compilation of forestry-themed papers since the inauguration of the CORS FSIG. The six pieces selected for the special issue, now published as a book, feature applications of OR to a wide range of forest management and forest products industry contexts, including supply-chain planning, lumber production planning, demand-driven harvest and transportation planning, and fire-aware wood supply planning. This book was originally published as a special issue of the INFOR: Information Systems and Operational Research journal.

Gregory Paradis is a forest engineer working on linking forest ecosystem management and forest products supply chain planning. He is currently affiliated with the Department of Forest Resources Management at the University of British Columbia, Canada.