Foresta to Utilize New Generation Forest Analytics
Automation Will Make Forest Management and Timber Trade More Efficient
The emphasis on the system development has been on modern services that automate previously manual work phases and offer tools that benefit our customers’ business on a wider scope too. The new services are:
Carbon storage and its reporting
Forest value definition based on market and income value
Monitoring and reporting of operational profitability (BI analytics)
Real-time monitoring of fellings, thinnings, and forest health risks
Extended timber trade and order to supply chain management
Automatic worksite notifications
Direct forest owner portal
Foresta is on the frontline of forest systems that utilize new generation forest analytics that concretely makes forest professionals’ work easier and decreases costs. With the development and analytics of the main system, the users will be able to easily optimize their own business and forest use and to put emphasis on different objectives of forest management, if they so desire. The mentioned services will be part of Foresta next year.
Significant time savings in managing forest management works and timber trade
The new Foresta services will utilize self-learning artificial intelligence. With its help, even big data masses on forest use, timber trade offers, or profitability of operations can be pressed into an easily usable format. When the analytics recognizes points of interest requiring special attention or caretaking, the system will automatically send a notification on them. This means that the user will not have to go through potential worksites manually, as the analysis will offer automatic suggestions with which work planning can be made faster. With the help of information, work can also be centralized so that there is only the minimum amount of equipment transfers needed. At the same time, the sales process of services from a forest professional to forest owners will be streamlined as there will be the opportunity to aid communication with analysis-provided data on forest management needs. With the new forest owner portal, all information will be in digital format in one place.
In addition to creating stands to be cut, users will be able to place these stands for bidding, compare received offers, and monitor deals. Receiving offers digitally will continue in the Kuutio service to which Foresta already has integrations.
Making offers and contracts as well as billing will be digital from start to finish and the data will be transferrable to your own financial management system. Company’s offer basis and number of orders will be easy to follow in summary views and customer-specific view will offer an extensive summary of customer’s forest property as well as of worksites where the work has been completed and of those where work is still ongoing.
Up-to-date satellite monitoring in the core of forest analytics
Bitcomp’s absolute strength in the forest sector is the utilization of up-to-date satellite monitoring. As forest system is just as good as its datasets, it is essential that forest resource information is up to date and that its quality is as high as possible. Inaccurate information can cause faultiness in offers or plans and resources will have to be spent on additional field visits.
Forest resource information will be updated practically in real time with the help of satellite data. This means that it will not be necessary to update forest cover information with growth models based on old information. Instead, it will be possible to obtain current forest cover information for timber trade or for buying and selling forest estates, for example. The accuracy of growth predictions can also be enhanced by incorporating satellite data to the process alongside of the old methods. It will be possible to complete the shortcomings of field plot measurement and to make the progression of forecasts based on laser scanning more accurate with satellite data.
When up-to-date satellite data and other datasets related to forest land (like terrain, weather, and nature information) are combined and analyzed, current information on forest-related risks, changes, damages, or carbon storages can be produced. Processing variables related to forest quality, health, and the size distribution of trees will be possible in Foresta thanks to artificial intelligence. These can then be used to make forest management more efficient. Once this information is combined with the aforementioned automation, Foresta user will end up with first class tools for reacting and offering services for example for storm damage prevention.
Carbon storage and balance reporting to be featured in Foresta
Optimizing the carbon storages of forests has been seen as an example of a significant mean to control climate change. Thus, there is a big need for carbon storage reporting, as the climate sustainability of forest management has become a more important goal than ever before for municipalities, cities as well as other forest owners. For reporting, users must be able to reliably verify the existence and number of carbon storages as well as how much carbon is stored annually. When carbon storages are counted on the basis of up-to-date satellite data, Foresta users will be able to count on having reliable data on carbon stored in forests.
In addition to climate sustainability, considering many other varying values and points of emphasis in forest planning have emerged from the users’ side. These include, among others, diversity, scenery values, and securing clear water, not to forget securing goods that can be picked from forests and gamekeeping. Tools relating to these objectives are also being innovated in the Bitcomp development team.
A plenty of reports – good or bad?
There are lots of new reports on the development road map of Foresta, which may sound exhausting, although the truth is quite the contrary. Monitoring the profitability of your operations, planning resources, and analyzing customer data – or, jointly, BI reporting – will become a fixed part of Foresta. With automatic reporting, profitability monitoring will not require any separate calculations. It will also be possible to easily see the number of service sales by products and on order, execution, and billing levels.
Forest value definition based on market and income value will also be added to accompany the summation approach value calculation.
More in-depth customer relationships with forest owners’ service
Some of the most important aspects to be developed in the forest sector as a whole are streamlining communication and utilizing forest owner and forest resource information. There are applications by several providers for the interaction between forest owners and a forest professional. In these applications, the emphasis has been on chat services with which a forest owner can contact a forest professional.
A forest owner application will be available in Foresta. With it, a forest owner will be able to seamlessly handle business with a forest professional both ways, not omitting the chat and phone support. The same automation that will work for the main users of Foresta will also work for forest owners. Forest owner will receive automatic notifications on points of interest requiring special attention or caretaking recognized by the analytics and suggestions for the management of these issues. They will then be able to visit the place on field to make additional notes on the site or to move worksites directly to a forest professional. Forest owner will also be able to choose what kind of management work they want done based on the emphasis they have chosen for the management of their forest. For the forest owners who do not want to get tangled in the details of the management of their forests, a concise roundup view to their forest property will be offered.
