Mathematical modeling of the assessment of the degree of vegetation coverage of the territories of infrastructure facilities

Removal of growing undesirable vegetation is often performed to properly maintain linear infrastructure facilities (easement areas for roads and railways, shelterbelts for power lines, gas, oil and product pipelines, and others). The authors of the article found that when these operations are organized and performed their quality is not assessed in a proper way. The existing methods and practices for assessing the quality of removal undesirable vegetation operations fail to provide an objective judgment on the effectiveness of activities to clear the infrastructure facilities areas from this vegetation. The density indicator of vegetation growing on an area of 1 hectare is almost universally used as an evaluation criterion. The authors revealed that this indicator features a high degree of subjectivity and does not provide adequate assessment of the degree of trees and shrubs vegetation colonization on the surveyed area. The aim of the study was to develop a mathematical model to assess the degree of infrastructural facilities coverage with undesirable vegetation and to substantiate a criterion that allows assessing the quality of work performed to remove this vegetation. The developed mathematical model takes into account previously identified characteristics of growing vegetation (plants number, crown projection area) and parameters of the surveyed area (studied area acreage and the actual area where vegetation was removed) and other parameters. As an output indicator of the developed mathematical model the authors proposed to use the criterion of non-project coverage of territories with undesirable vegetation. The article presents an example of assessing the quality of operations for vegetation removing from the easement areas of railways for a number of initial data. The criterion developed by the authors for non-project coverage of the territories of linear infrastructure facilities with undesirable trees and shrubs vegetation may be used when organizing vegetation removal to justify the use of the necessary system of machines and mechanisms. The criterion may be applied to assess the quality of cleaning the infrastructure facilities areas from undesirable vegetation.