Advancing contiguous environmental land allocation analysis, planning and modeling

Abstract

The identification or delineation of a spatially contiguous area within a larger region is an important land use planning problem and is utilized across a range of disciplines and management contexts. This involves the selection of individual spatial units, such as parcels, forest stands, management areas, etc., for an intended goal, purpose, usage and/or activity with constraints on maximum size along with contiguity requirements. The goal of this paper is to present a new spatial optimization model that can be used to simultaneously delineate single or multiple patches, where each is a contiguous set of individual spatial units, meets specific size requirements and is spatially distinct. We structure this new model as a mixed integer-linear program. We also present an application of this new model to a land management problem encountered by the USDA Forest Service involving wildfire mitigation efforts.