Optimization Forest Road Construction Using Ant Colony Metaheuristic

Abstract

For designing forest roads that in addition to minimize the cost of constructing, satisfy environmentalists, it is necessary to provide designers and contractors accurate data from surface and subsurface conditions of the road area due to the large-scale of data using of optimization methods (metaheuristic algorithms) with the help of computers is necessary. For this purpose, this research was carried out on a proposed forest road whit length of 1 km in the forests of the district 4 of Babakoh in the city of Siahkal in Guilan province. The cycle of all earthwork work was studied by continuous time study method and the information of the subsurface layers terms of digging was carefully recorded. The results of comparing the method of the ant colony with the hand-made design scenario showed that the multi-objective algorithm presented in this study has great potential for reducing the cost of earthwork operations and its volume. Based on the results, the algorithm is able to reduce 58.55 and 64 percent the cost of earthwork operations and the volume of operations, respectively. Finally, the results of this research can be used as a guide to better management of forest areas, especially forest roads with the development of efficient methods in all forestry forests.

Keywords

• cost model
• earthwork volume
• road profile
• road line