Developing a Decision Support System to Improve Transportation Planning in Landslide Prone Terrain

Within the past decade, several transportation planning decision support systems that combine heuristic programming techniques with geographic information systems (GIS) technology have been developed to meet forest operation challenges. These decision support systems, however, have not directly addressed the upslope influences of landslides in choosing routes from road networks. This paper provides an overview of an on-going research project that seeks to develop a decision support system that takes slope stability into account when selecting transportation routes. The advancement of GIS and heuristic tools to assist planners in the location of transportation corridors may yield significant benefits in reducing short and long term costs associated with route selection and transportation networks.