Background
The Red-cockaded Woodpecker (RCW), Picoides borealis, is listed by the United States Federal Government as an endangered species. The RCW prefers mature pine forests as its habitat and takes 1-3 years to build nesting cavities in pine trees. The RCW's nesting habits support many other species in the ecosystem, making the RCW a keystone species. Due to their nesting requirements, conservation efforts focus on purchasing land parcels to be maintained as reserves, in which artificial nests for RCW are installed.
The generator of Mixed Integer Programs in .lp format provided below was produced for research into the Red-Cockaded Woodpecker (RCW) conservation problem. Like many species, RCW dispersion can be predicted using various simulation models influenced by geographic landscape. The MIPs provided encode the problem of choosing the set of land parcels to purchase under some budget that maximize the number of land patches inhabited by RCW across some number N of stochastic samples of an RCW dispersion model. This generator was produced as a result of the following research (conducted with the Institute for Computational Sustainability).
[1] D. Sheldon, B. Dilkina, A. Elmachtoub, R. Finseth, A. Sabharwal, J. Conrad, C. P. Gomes, D. Shmoys, W. Allen, O. Amundsen, and B. Vaughan. Maximizing spread of cascades using network design. In UAI-2010: 26th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, pp. 517-526, Catalina Island, Avalon, CA, July 2010. [bibtex]
[2] K. Ahmadizadeh, B. Dilkina, C. P. Gomes, and A. Sabharwal. An empirical study of optimization for maximizing diffusion in networks. In CP-2010: 16th Intl. Conf. on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming, St Andrews, Scotland, Sept. 2010. [bibtex]
The MIP generator works with map files that encode sets of patches grouped into parcels for purchase. Sample maps are provided with the MIP generator. Those in need of additional maps can download the RCW map generator below, which will produce random maps suitable for use with the MIP generator.
More details on the MIP and map generators can be found in [2]. The downloads below contain README files with full details on using the generators. Please contact Kiyan Ahmadizadeh with any questions.
Downloads
Utilities can be built on Linux and Unix systems.
RCW MIP Generator
[Download] - September 24th, 2010
RCW Map Generator
[Download] - August 31st, 2010