A Forest Product/Bioenergy Mill Location and Decision Support System Based on a County-level Forest Inventory and Geo-spatial Information*

The forest products industry is a major component of Mississippi’s economic base. The need for a county-level forest inventory and the availability of decision support tools for locating forest product mills are of primary importance in attracting and sustaining the industry. The objective of this paper is to describe the pilot study, currently under development, for an integrated decision support system (DSS) that determines the feasibility and optimal location of a forest products mill based on geo-spatial information and a county-level forest inventory. The DSS will aid economic development decisions for state planners, forest industry, and forest and wildlife managers. Geographic Information System (GIS) layers were constructed for a 15county southwest Mississippi study area for type, age, ownership, and volume. Growth and drain ratios will be calculated from volume-age relations and historical Landsat multi-spectral images. Raw material and finished product haul distances and costs will be determined from a transportation network of the primary, secondary, and county roads. The user will enter mill specific input parameters through a Microsoft Visual C++ interface, and a linear programming (LP) model minimizes the costs of procuring wood to the potential mill site and transporting the finished product to market.