add_actions: Add management actions to a planning problem

In multiscape: Multi-Action, Multi-Objective Spatial Planning

Add management actions to a planning problem

Description

Define the action catalogue, the set of feasible planning unit–action pairs, their implementation costs, and the effective area represented by each feasible planning unit–action decision.

This function adds two core components to a Problem object. First, it stores the action catalogue. Second, it creates the feasible planning unit–action table, including implementation costs, effective action areas, status codes, and internal indices used by the optimization backend.

Conceptually, if \mathcal{I} is the set of planning units and \mathcal{A} is the set of actions, this function determines which pairs (i,a) \in \mathcal{I} \times \mathcal{A} are feasible decisions and assigns a non-negative implementation cost to each feasible pair.

Usage

add_actions(
  x,
  actions,
  include_pairs = NULL,
  exclude_pairs = NULL,
  cost = NULL,
  action_area = NULL
)

Arguments

x	A Problem object created with create_problem.
actions	A data.frame defining the action catalogue. It must contain a unique id column. A column named action is also accepted and automatically renamed to id.
include_pairs	Optional specification of feasible (pu, action) pairs. It can be NULL, a data.frame with columns pu and action (optionally also feasible), or a named list whose names are action ids and whose elements are vectors of planning unit ids or sf objects.
exclude_pairs	Optional specification of infeasible (pu, action) pairs. It uses the same formats as include_pairs and removes matching pairs from the feasible set.
cost	Optional cost specification for feasible pairs. It may be NULL, a scalar numeric value, a named numeric vector indexed by action id, or a data.frame with columns action, cost or pu, action, cost.
action_area	Optional effective area specification for feasible (pu, action) pairs. It may be NULL or a data.frame with columns pu, action, and action_area. If NULL, action areas are derived from spatial include_pairs when available, otherwise they default to full planning-unit areas when these can be derived from the problem.

Details

When to use add_actions().

Use this function when you want to move from a planning problem defined only by planning units and features to a problem in which decisions are explicitly represented as actions applied in planning units.

Action catalogue.

The actions argument must be a data.frame with a unique id column identifying each action. If a column named action is supplied instead, it is renamed internally to id. Additional columns are preserved. If no name column is provided, action labels are taken from id. If an action_set column is present, it is also preserved and can later be used to refer to groups of actions. To register combinations with many-to-many membership, use add_action_sets after defining the individual actions. Existing definitions are validated whenever the action catalog is updated.

Actions are stored sorted by id to ensure reproducible internal indexing.

Feasible planning unit–action pairs.

Feasibility is controlled through include_pairs and exclude_pairs.

If include_pairs = NULL, all possible (pu, action) pairs are initially considered feasible, that is, all pairs (i,a) \in \mathcal{I} \times \mathcal{A}.

If include_pairs is supplied, only those pairs are retained. If exclude_pairs is also supplied, matching pairs are removed afterwards.

More precisely, let \mathcal{D}^{\mathrm{inc}} denote the set of included planning unit–action pairs and let \mathcal{D}^{\mathrm{exc}} denote the set of excluded pairs.

If include_pairs = NULL, the feasible decision set is:

\{(i,a) : i \in \mathcal{I},\ a \in \mathcal{A}\} \setminus \mathcal{D}^{\mathrm{exc}}.

If include_pairs is supplied, the feasible decision set is:

\mathcal{D}^{\mathrm{inc}} \setminus \mathcal{D}^{\mathrm{exc}}.

Both include_pairs and exclude_pairs can be specified as:

• NULL,

• a data.frame with columns pu and action,

• or a named list whose names are action ids.

When supplied as a data.frame, the object must contain columns pu and action. An optional logical-like column feasible may also be provided; only rows with feasible = TRUE are retained. Missing values in feasible are treated as FALSE.

When supplied as a named list, names must match action ids. Each element may contain either:

• a vector of planning-unit ids, or

• an sf object defining the spatial zone where the action is feasible.

Lists may mix vectors of planning-unit ids and sf objects across actions. In the spatial case, feasible planning units are identified using sf::st_intersects() against the stored planning-unit geometry. If include_pairs or exclude_pairs contains sf objects, the problem must contain planning-unit geometry in x$data$pu_sf; otherwise an error is raised.

Spatial exclusions are applied after inclusions. If a planning unit–action pair is included and excluded, the exclusion takes precedence and the pair is removed. Spatial exclusions remove complete (pu, action) pairs; they do not partially subtract area from included geometries.

Action areas.

The action_area column in dist_actions stores the effective area represented by each feasible (pu, action) decision. This is an area, not an action intensity.

If action_area = NULL, action areas are derived automatically:

• when include_pairs is supplied using sf objects, action areas are computed as the area of the spatial intersection between planning-unit geometries and the corresponding action geometries;

• when feasible pairs are supplied without spatial geometries, action areas default to the full planning-unit area when this can be derived from the problem object.

If action_area is supplied as a data.frame, it must contain columns pu, action, and action_area. A column named area is also accepted and renamed internally to action_area. Supplied areas must be finite and non-negative. User-supplied values override automatically derived values for matching feasible pairs. Rows referring to non-feasible pairs are ignored with a warning.

If full planning-unit areas cannot be derived for some feasible pairs, action_area is left as NA for those pairs. Area-based action constraints should check for missing action_area values before model construction.

Feasibility versus decision fixing.

This function only determines whether a pair (i,a) exists in the model. It does not force a feasible action to be selected or forbidden beyond structural infeasibility. Fixed decisions should instead be imposed later with add_constraint_locked_actions.

Costs.

Costs can be supplied in several ways:

• If cost = NULL, all feasible pairs receive a default cost of 1.

• If cost is a scalar, that value is assigned to all feasible pairs.

• If cost is a named numeric vector, names must match action ids and costs are assigned by action.

• If cost is a data.frame, it must define either:

  • action-level costs through columns action and cost, or

  • pair-specific costs through columns pu, action, and cost.

In all cases, costs must be finite and non-negative.

In practice, a scalar cost is useful when all actions cost the same everywhere, a named vector is useful when cost depends only on action type, and a (pu, action, cost) table is useful when cost varies by both planning unit and action.

Status values.

Internally, all feasible pairs are initialized with status = 0, meaning that the decision is free. If planning units have already been marked as locked out, then all feasible actions in those planning units are assigned status = 3. This preserves consistency with planning-unit exclusions already stored in the problem.

Repeated calls.

The action catalogue and feasible pairs can be defined only once per problem. A second call raises an error, even if the input is identical. To compare action catalogues, build separate problems from the object before this call.

After defining actions, typical next steps include adding effects, optional decision-fixing constraints, objectives, and solver settings before calling solve().

Value

An updated Problem object with:

actions

The action catalogue, including a unique integer internal_id for each action.

dist_actions

The feasible planning unit–action table with columns pu, action, cost, action_area, status, internal_pu, and internal_action.

pu index

A mapping from user-supplied planning-unit ids to internal integer ids.

action index

A mapping from action ids to internal integer ids.

See Also

create_problem, add_action_sets, add_constraint_locked_actions

Examples

# Load a complete simulated planning problem.
example_data <- load_sim_multiaction()

p <- create_problem(
  pu = example_data$planning_units,
  features = example_data$features,
  dist_features = example_data$dist_features,
  cost = "cost"
)

actions <- data.frame(
  id = c("conservation", "restoration"),
  name = c("Conservation", "Restoration")
)

# Example 1: all actions feasible in all planning units
p1 <- add_actions(
  x = p,
  actions = actions,
  cost = c(conservation = 5, restoration = 12)
)

print(p1)
utils::head(p1$data$dist_actions)

# Example 2: specify feasible pairs explicitly
include_df <- data.frame(
  pu = c(1, 2, 3, 4),
  action = c("conservation", "conservation", "restoration", "restoration")
)

p2 <- add_actions(
  x = p,
  actions = actions,
  include_pairs = include_df,
  cost = 10
)

p2$data$dist_actions

# Example 3: remove selected pairs after full expansion
exclude_df <- data.frame(
  pu = c(2, 4),
  action = c("restoration", "conservation")
)

p3 <- add_actions(
  x = p,
  actions = actions,
  exclude_pairs = exclude_df,
  cost = c(conservation = 3, restoration = 8)
)

utils::head(p3$data$dist_actions)

# Example 4: provide action-specific areas manually
action_area <- data.frame(
  pu = c(1, 2, 3, 4),
  action = c("conservation", "conservation", "restoration", "restoration"),
  action_area = c(100, 50, 80, 100)
)

p4 <- add_actions(
  x = p,
  actions = actions,
  include_pairs = include_df,
  action_area = action_area,
  cost = 10
)

p4$data$dist_actions

multiscape documentation built on Oct. 12, 2026, 5:08 p.m.