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.
In the context of systematic reserve design, the minimum set objective
seeks to find the set of planning units that minimizes the overall cost of
a reserve network, while meeting a set of representation targets for the
conservation features. This objective is equivalent to a simplified Marxan
reserve design problem with the Boundary Length Modifier (BLM) set to zero.
The minimum set 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:
$$\mathit{Minimize} \space \sum_{i = 1}^{I} x_i c_i \\
\mathit{subject \space to} \\
\sum_{i = 1}^{I} x_i r_{ij} \geq T_j \space \forall \space j \in J$$
Here, \(x_i\) is the decisions
variable (e.g. specifying
whether planning unit \(i\) has been selected (1) or not (0)),
\(c_i\) is the cost of planning unit \(i\), \(r_{ij}\) is
the amount of feature \(j\) in planning unit \(i\), and
\(T_j\) is the target for feature \(j\). The first term is the
objective function and the second is the set of constraints. In words this
says find the set of planning units that meets all the representation
targets while minimizing the overall cost.