A problem objective is used to specify the overall goal of the
conservation planning problem. Please note that all conservation
planning problems formulated in the prioritizr package require the addition
of both objectives and targets. Failing to do so will return a default
error message when solving.
The maximum feature representation problem is a hybrid between the minimum
set (see add_min_set_objective
) and maximum cover
(see add_max_cover_objective
) problems in that it allows for
both a budget and targets to be set. This problem finds the set of planning
units that meets representation targets for as many features as possible
while staying within a fixed budget. If multiple solutions can meet all
targets while staying within budget, the cheapest solution is chosen.
The maximum feature objective for the reserve design problem can be
expressed mathematically for a set of planning units (\(I\) indexed by
\(i\)) and a set of features (\(J\) indexed by \(j\)) as:
$$\mathit{Maximize} \space \sum_{i = 1}^{I} s \space c_i +
\sum_{j = 1}^{J} y_j w_j \\
\mathit{subject \space to} \\
\sum_{i = 1}^{I} x_i r_{ij} >= y_j t_j \forall j \in J \\
\sum_{i = 1}^{I} x_i c_i \leq B$$
Here, \(x_i\) is the decisions
variable (e.g.
specifying whether planning unit \(i\) has been selected (1) or not
(0)), \(r_{ij}\) is the amount of feature \(j\) in planning unit
\(i\), \(t_j\) is the representation target for feature
\(j\), \(y_j\) indicates if the solution has meet
the target \(t_j\) for feature \(j\), and \(w_j\) is the
weight for feature \(j\) (defaults to 1 for all features; see
add_feature_weights
to specify weights). Additionally,
\(B\) is the budget allocated for the solution, \(c_i\) is the
cost of planning unit \(i\), and \(s\) is a scaling factor used to
shrink the costs so that the problem will return a cheapest solution when
there are multiple solutions that represent the same amount of all features
within the budget.