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Designing higher value roads to preserve species at risk by optimally controlling traffic flow

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Abstract

The construction and operation of linear infrastructure has major impacts on biodiversity through loss of habitat, increased mortality and loss of connectivity. In particular, minimising the impact of roads which pass through ecologically sensitive areas on surrounding species at the construction and operational phases is critical for conservation. However, potential impacts are rarely known perfectly at the construction phase and early in the operational phase. To address this problem, a company could build flexibility into road operation so that it can respond rapidly to future ecological impacts if necessary. In this paper we analyse the value of this flexibility using stochastic dynamic programming and use the results to guide a global search algorithm to find high value roads in the region. We consider flexibility in terms of the proportion of traffic volume routed along the road, with the remainder passing along an existing higher-cost, lower-impact road. We applied this to an example scenario where a road must be routed through a region with a vulnerable species present. By incorporating flexibility, the proposed model was able to find a road that met a desired ending population of animals and was more valuable than roads found under existing design alternatives.

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Available upon request to the first author.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the two anonymous reviewers and the editor for their constructive comments and valuable suggestions. This research project was started while the corresponding author was affiliated with CSIRO’s Data61.

Funding

This research was funded through an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship and a CSIRO Data61 Top-up Scholarship.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Melbourne School of Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, 3010, Australia

    Nicholas Davey & Saman Halgamuge

  2. BNU-HKBU United International College, Zhuhai, 519087, Guangdong, China

    Nicolas Langrené

  3. CSIRO’s Data61, Docklands, VIC, 3008, Australia

    Wen Chen & Simon Dunstall

  4. ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, 4072, Australia

    Jonathan R. Rhodes

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  1. Nicholas Davey
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Correspondence to Nicolas Langrené.

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Davey, N., Langrené, N., Chen, W. et al. Designing higher value roads to preserve species at risk by optimally controlling traffic flow. Ann Oper Res 320, 663–693 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-022-04779-0

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