Abstract:
Evaluating different timber transport configurations for a large road network is a challenging
task. Road curves are often too sharp to allow access to certain configurations. This paper
evaluates the feasibility of using a geographical information system (GIS) road data set as a basis
for determining the accessibility of plantation roads for several truck configurations and to
determine the optimal road system for three given vehicle configurations by minimizing total
cost. The main constraint considered is the ability of a vehicle configuration to move through the
curves found in the road network of the Elandshoogte plantation, Mpumalanga, South Africa.
There are two objectives in this project: 1) to evaluate the feasibility of using geographical
information system (GIS) road data as a basis for determining the accessibility of plantation roads
to several truck configurations and 2) to determine the optimal road system for the three given
vehicle configuration by minimizing the total cost. Constraints are generated by calculating the
amount of offtracking for each vehicle configuration for all the roads and road connections
found on the plantation by using the OFFTRACK program (Erkert, 1989). The minimum cost
network is solved by using NETWORK 2000 (Chung and Sessions, 2001).
