Transportation constitutes a large part of the forest industry's raw material costs. Transport also contributes a significant proportion of the carbon dioxide emissions. In order to reduce both the cost and environmental impact different types of decision support are required. These, in turn, require extensive information about the road network and correct information on road path selection and transport distances. In the development of national road data base for forestry (SNVDB) a road selection application has been included. The road selection application states chosen roads and distances between two points.
The aim of this study has been to quantify the reliability in the road selection and possible systematic errors in transport distances. This is done in order to estimate the economic effect of a transition from the present distance calculation methods to using the “least expensive path” application.
The results showed that the road selection application (with its current calibration parameters) chose another road than used in reality in 16 % of the cases. In 46 % of the cases the incorrect road choice resulted from discrepancies in SNVDB. The analysis showed that the distances generated by with the road selection application were on average 1.4 % longer than for the present calculation method. The variation the two, however were large, ranging from -5.4 % to 5.6 %.
The change in the average transport distances, while appearing small, translates into a large annual expenditure for Stora Enso Skog's transport organization because of the large volumes involved.
The parameters used in this study were not the first and definitely not the last that will be tested. In order to find a road selection application that chooses the true transport road, more tests are needed in order to continuo...
