Multi-criteria decision-making methods in the management of forest road maintenance

In order to better management of existing forest roads maintenance in the country in addition to economic indicators, it is essential to contribute other effective factors such as improvements in road pavement, road effects on economic conditions of forestry plans, cost of forest operation, users and natural conditions. Considering the above-mentioned factors as well as their impact on the prioritization of options requires multi-criteria decision-making, which has been investigated in this study. For this purpose, factors affecting the maintenance were first determined by expert's opinion. Then 50 km of forest road under the management of Mazandaran wood and paper company was selected. Due to the wide range of quantitative and qualitative factors and a large number of alternatives, Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) was developed to prioritize the repair and maintenance of forest roads. According to the results, the mentioned method is able to prioritize the forest network in term of the maintenance operation. The result of the current study also showed that the decision makers are able to prioritize the forest roads from different spatial and temporal point of view using the generated model according to expert knowledge and effectiveness of these factors.