Sustainability of forest management plans: a discrete goal programming approach

Let us consider i = 1, 2,...n alternative forest plans to be evaluated according to j = 1, 2,...m indicators of sustainability. An expert or panel of experts suggests a set of targets or desirable levels of achievement for the in indicators of sustainability considered. Within this context, an important problem is to determine the system with a higher level of achievement with respect to the targets attached by the expert to the in indicators. A natural extension of this problem involves determining a ranking of the n systems considered. A general procedure based on discrete goal programming is proposed to address these problems. The methodology is applied in a case study of a Spanish forest. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.