(3)ForestWISE CoLaB, CESAM (UA)
Forests provide crucial ecosystem services to human societies and host the largest share of terrestrial biodiversity. Wood and other renewable raw materials from forests have numerous applications – furniture, paper, construction industry - and biofuel for bioenergy generation. European Forest-based industries employ about 3.5 million people and represent about 7% of EU manufacturing GDP(1). In many rural areas, the forestry sector is the largest employer. Furthermore, forests play a crucial role in the goals of carbon neutrality and mitigating climate change effects, as one of the most important natural carbon sinks and the source of biomaterials and biofuels, capable of replacing emission-intensive materials and fossil fuels.
A sustainable adaptation of forest ecosystems, modulated by more resilient and adaptative management strategies to meet the needs of current and future generations (in contrast to an uncoordinated adaptation), is required to face the challenges of this sector. Forest-based value chains should engage technological capabilities for preventing, containing, and mitigating climate change effects and increase resilience towards risks - such as forest fires. To achieve a more resilient supply chain, we need to increase the use of forest residues and the efficiency of woody biomass processing and transport, fostering the link between the bioeconomy and the circular economy. Public policies point to an increase in the contribution of the Portuguese forestry sector (biomass included), whose current contribution to the bioeconomy is estimated at 38.6 billion euros in 2014, according to the report by the European Forest Institute(2).
‘‘Digitalisation in the forest”, as this phrase itself suggests the sustainable implementation of cutting-edge technologies for forestry, improving forest monitoring through data acquisition and analysis, and computerised decision support aids to electronic control, machine vision, supply chain planning and post-harvest management. Technologies that can be used effectively to achieve these objectives include the Internet of Things, Wireless Sensor Networks, Internet of Trees, Deep Learning, LiDAR Technology, drones, geospatial data, and mobile apps(3).
Portugal has witnessed an increasing mechanisation of forestry operations, particularly in forestry exploration and use of forest biomass, upstream operations related to the installation and maintenance of stands (see fig. 1), and fuel management to reduce fire risk. Recent forestry machinery is generally equipped to collect and report data for remote monitoring of material flows (quantities produced), equipment productivity and utilization rate (e.g., OEE), and operations status. However, this information is not collected or processed systematically. The solutions adopted for collecting and sharing data between landowners, service providers, and industry should allow remote monitoring of field operations, ensure transparency, and allow replanning/redeployment of resources to avoid efficiency losses inthe use of the equipment and teams’ performance. These problems tend to worsen with the growing workforce shortage in the sector.
Forestry and wood supply chains are developing the idea of Forest 4.0 by combining solutions available on the market for several years, such as LiDAR (see fig. 2) and RFID, but not widely used in the industrial forestry context, with the implementation and adoption of new technologies. This transformational and organisational change process shows challenges of a technical and socio-economic nature. Most of them are similar to other industrial sectors. The introduction of data standards between all equipment and operations is one of said challenges. The security of IT systems and data protection is another challenge, as ownership of data should be discussed with all stakeholders. Other forestry-specific challenges are the robustness and reliability of the equipment (sensor usage in an outside environment, the wireless transmission of data, and the complexity of the forest operations). The transformational aspects of the forestry digitalisation result in socio-economic challenges. The main challenge for the forestry sector is the willingness tocooperate across organisational borders and the trust in other organisations within the supply chain, which handles its high stakeholder fragmentation.(4)
The greater participation of all players in the forest supply chain is key to overcome these issues. These initiatives involve dissemination actions, workshops, webinars, and projects that mobilise forest owners, forest organisations, service providers (biomass, forestry, wood and non-wood products), suppliers (fertilisers, plants, and machines), paper, furniture, and energy companies, end customers, and technology providers (who will promote and commercialise the solutions developed by universities and research centres, and tested in pilot demonstrators).
The integration of these various levels of knowledge, innovation and technology is essential for the environmental, social, and economic sustainability of European forests and rural areas.