Making forestry smarter – with the Competence Centre Forest and Wood 4.0
Forestry and the forest can become more digital too – and this is not about posting nature photos on Instagram. Rather, it is about the very complex network of forest management, which in North Rhine-Westphalia alone unites around 17,000 companies and more than 190,000 employees. This encompasses representatives of all activities along the value chain around forest management, reforestation and timber harvesting. Bringing this network into conversation with one another and making it more accessible to external interested parties is the task of the Competence Centre Forest and Wood 4.0, which is funded with European Union resources.
Forstify is a partner of the Competence Centre Forest and Wood 4.0
Forstify is a partner of KWH 4.0 and works together with other project partners and the centre itself to, on the one hand, better connect forestry: “Our goal is to use our raw-timber marketing platform to connect regional forestry players nationally and internationally with buyers,” explains our co-founder and Managing Director Marco Hartmann. On the other hand, the goal is also to make digital technologies more accessible for forestry through our own software development and further development of the existing solution. This is always about gaining the best possible overview of the timber stock in detail and the forest as a whole.
“At Forstify, in the case of the search agent for example, we work with artificial intelligence, which quickly matches open requests and offers and thus automatically connects both sides,” explains Christian Kaulich, co-founder and responsible for the further development of the technical solution. Alongside this, solutions from the field of augmented reality (AR) are also used, helping to reliably measure and assess entire log piles on site.
Digital twins help with forest management
The Smart Forestry project by KWH 4.0, for example, focuses on intelligent, cross-cluster integrated timber harvesting. Based on technologies already known from industry (Industry 4.0, the networking of production machines with one another) and the so-called Internet of Things (IoT, the networking of usually rather analogue devices such as heating, fridge or dishwasher), so-called digital twins are created. These digital twins of entire forests and machines then enable precise statements about how management can work, taking into account the current stock and specific geological or topographical features. This covers the entire process from reforestation to timber harvesting and the optimal routes for it.
“We at Forstify are delighted to be part of this undertaking and to contribute our expertise from raw-timber marketing as well as our technical development competence,” concludes Marco Hartmann. The Smart Forestry project, in which the RWTH Aachen University also participates, among others, is funded by the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture and its project executing organisation, the Agency for Renewable Resources (Fachagentur Nachwachsende Rohstoffe e.V.).
Information on this project is provided, among other things, by this video: