Project description
Innovative web platform for reliable forest inventories
Forest inventories rely on fieldwork to achieve precision and serve as a reliable management tool. This implies high costs and considerable time-spending. ForestMap is an innovative web platform that conducts inexpensive, fast and reliable forest inventories. The platform uses pre-processed remote sensing data (LiDAR) without requiring additional fieldwork and leads to decreased costs up to 85 % and time compared to traditional inventories. The EU-funded FORESTMAP project will optimise the algorithm for different tree species and the automatic data download from administration servers of targeted countries when available. The innovation targets the woodworking industries, private landowners, and forest consultants, providing a tool that will increase forest-based competitiveness among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Objective
ForestMap is an innovative web-platform to conduct forest inventories inexpensively in a quick and reliable manner. To date forest inventories have always relied on field work to achieve a precision enough to be used as a management tool, increasing costs and delivery times. However, ForestMap is able to deliver full reports in minutes using pre-processed remote sensing data (LiDAR) without requiring additional fieldwork. ForestMap can decrease costs up to 85% and time (weeks to minutes) compared to traditional inventories. ForestMap main customers will be a) all the woodworking industries requiring a quick and precise inventory for forest exploitation; b) private landowners requiring a cheap inventory to comply with local regulation that may belong to forest associations and c) forest consultants that will use our inventory to define forest management strategies. A ?-version of ForestMap platform has been validated and is operating in Spain through several data collection campaigns and data analysis which demonstrate the algorithm in relevant environment (TRL 7). The project will optimize the algorithm for different tree species and the automatic data download from administrations’ servers of targeted countries when available (for two countries: Italy and Portugal, we will collect our own LiDAR data). ForestMap is the only user-friendly web platform across countries able to automatically generate forest inventories without the need of field work, delivering: reliable (BIAS<15%), quick and cost-effective reports. Our target is to increase forest-based SMEs competitiveness by providing a tool that will support wood mobilisation. With cumulative net benefit of 6.9M€ during 2020-2024 ForestMap will boost AGRESTA business and turning the company in a technical and commercial reference among forest consultants. Moreover, it will contribute to the growth of the whole EU forestry sector improving forest management, mobilizing the market and creating new job position.
Fields of science
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME - SME instrumentCoordinator
28012 Madrid
Spain
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.