Roadside Grass Biomass Assessment and Capacity-Constrained Allocation Using Aerial Geographic Information

This study assesses roadside grass biomass harvesting and allocation to collection centers using spatially explicit methods for preliminary district-heating supply-chain planning. Road-network data combined with mowing data for county roads were used to estimate theoretical, technically recoverable, and annual energy potentials in Kołobrzeg County, Poland, while high-resolution aerial imagery was used to identify roadside sections where biomass cannot be harvested, such as bridges, paved shoulders, gravel surfaces, and bicycle paths. Dijkstra’s algorithm calculated shortest network distances, after which a custom assignment procedure allocated road nodes and associated biomass to collection centers using either the baseline distance-based rule or its capacity-constrained extension. The estimated annual energy potential ranged from 14.9 to 38.1 TJ/a among the analyzed municipalities. In the two-center scenarios, the number of nodes assigned to the southern center increased from 25 under its 3000t limit to 41 under equal 5875t limits at both centers. The results show that combining aerial-image interpretation, biomass-to-energy estimation, and network-based allocation provides a transparent framework for identifying priority collection areas and organizing roadside biomass transport. The proposed workflow can support local authorities in preliminary biomass supply-chain planning and can be adapted to other regions with suitable spatial data.