Rosewood 4.0

woodpassage - from tree to house!
An installation consisting of four wooden gates makes the transformation from tree to house a sensual experience. It tells the story of the contribution of modern timber construction to climate- and resource-friendly cities of the future.
The tree grows in the forest - the tree becomes wood - the wood becomes the house. With simple pictogrammatic signs in forty steps, slice by slice cut out of large blocks of wood, the "wood passage" conveys the transformation from tree to house. When walking through the archways, each with their imposing size of 4.3 by 4.3 metres, the special materiality of wood can be experienced. At the same time, the walk-in installation is a playful mouthpiece for the ecological advantages of building with wood.
13 cubic metres of wood are used in the installation. This amount grows back in Austria's forests in 13 seconds. 13 tonnes of CO2 are permanently bound in the wood of the four gates. This is equivalent to the pollutant emissions of a passenger car in 8 years. 
Wood is constantly growing back in the forest and is available. 30 million cubic metres of wood are produced in Austria's forests every year, only about 26 million cubic metres of which are harvested. The rest remains in the forest and steadily increases the wood supply.
40 percent of all resources consumed go into the construction sector, and globally this sector is also responsible for 40 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. Wood replaces building materials from finite resources. Houses made of wood bind CO2 in the long term and thus are gentle on the climate. The increased use of wood in construction is creating a second forest in our cities. 

With Woodlogistics, a modular software, the entire wood procurement process is controlled and optimised from the forest via the logging companies and hauliers to the sawmills. The aim of the web-based system solution is to make the purchase of roundwood by sawmills more efficient, to provide continuous information on the current status and thus to increase the trust of all parties involved. The basis for this is that the essential information can be retrieved quickly and transparently by the right people at any time.

The platform comprises three modules:

1. Roundwood takeover module: provides up-to-date online information and stores all relevant documents on roundwood transport to the wood-processing company. In addition, the data is automatically synchronised with the measuring system on the factory site. 
2. Information and communication module: Stands for simple, fast and cross-company communication. It contains the location-independent provision of all essential information for suppliers, log buyers and hauliers. It also provides transfer data, the forest delivery note and individual master data.
3. Planning and control module: With this module, purchasing budgets can be allocated with the current target/actual status. It also contains a closing entry module with automatic transfer to the ERP system. The included freight cost module enables transport controlling.

Festmeter Wöls Ltd. offers vitality analyses with regard to bark beetle detection in coniferous forests. Using the carrier systems multicopter or light aircraft, forest plots are flown over in a grid system and aerial photographs are taken with a special camera, which are later analysed and evaluated on the computer. The technology used makes vitality restrictions visible, changes in the water content of the needles can be seen, but not the exact cause, such as the bark beetle itself. However, since image series from at least two flights at different times are compared, many other causes such as drought stress can be excluded and the bark beetle can be traced very closely.  Initial trees are identified in the analysis, while the decision on necessary measures remains with the qualified on-site staff. A 100% hit rate is impossible. The aim should be to be able to act faster and more purposefully in the field. Long-standing customers report positive hit rates of over 80%. 

The preservation of forest functions and the supply of a region with the renewable resource wood require new strategies for forest owners, which they can only implement in cooperation with various partners. Answers to these challenges are to be developed within the framework of this pilot project, for which the political district of "Graz-Umgebung" was selected for Austria, on the basis of a sustainable wood mobilisation chain and climate-fit forest management. Timber mobilisation in private forests means mobilising forest owners and getting them interested in climate-friendly forest management. Because of property protection, additional wood mobilisation can only be achieved in cooperation with the forest owners. An essential step in the project is to point out exemplary small-scale forest managers who have been exploiting their wood utilisation potential for generations in the form of active family forestry. Under the motto "We make our forest climate-fit", active small-scale forest managers are brought into the public eye as climate-fit ambassadors.

The main objectives are:

• Establish continuity in the support and advice of forest owners
• Increase wood volumes from the project region
• Targeted public relations measures in the urban environment to generate a positive perception about the need to manage our forests
• Establish an advisory and support structure that can be ensured without public funding beyond the project
• Further development of digital offers for forest owners

Electronic timber tracking is a single electronic register of Ukrainian timber. Permanent forest users are obliged to electronically tag each log (or in case of firewood each batch) enabling to establish the legality of its harvesting, namely: description of the log, place and time, name of the team that carried out the procurement, transport document. Thus the system digitally represents the supply chain from forest to the buyer at the first processing facility. Electronic timber accounting has been implemented in Ukraine in phases since 2009, and is still running. At first the system was used only by permanent users under the State Agency of Forest Resources of Ukraine (SFRA) and since 2020 it becomes obligatory to all permanent forest users in Ukraine. 

Technology, equipment and software come from Latchbacher (AT) and are adapted to the Ukrainian conditions. For foresters, as key users, the system decreases the time to register, process and report on sales of unprocessed timber. At the same time, it is also freely accessible for the general public on the website. Anyone can track the legality of timber origin knowing the number of the tag, or invoice number, or truck license plate. As of December 2019 electronic timber tracking is carried out by 504 enterprises (incl. 297 enterprises of the SFRA). Ministries and agencies are also connected to the system for control and information exchange purposes. In total, more than 3,700 mobile users are connected.  

Objectives. To meet the global and European challenges of reducing the GHG emissions from the construction sector, Build-in-Wood will develop a sustainable and innovative wood value chain for the construction of multi-storey wood buildings. The ambition of the project is to make optimised and cost effective wood construction methods common practice in the European construction sector. The objectives include: 1) To make wood a natural choice of building material for the construction of multi-storey buildings, 2) To decrease GHG-emissions of the European building sector, 3) To establish an innovative and sustainable European value chain for multi-storey wood buildings, 4) To improve the connection between rural and urban areas and to contribute to sustainable urbanisation, 5) To increase productivity of the European building sector.

Build-in-Wood will address this challenge through innovative development of materials and components as well as structural systems and façade elements for multi-storey wood buildings fit for both new construction and retrofitting. Developments will be tested, piloted and fully documented for immediate market uptake. Active engagement of selected cities will strengthen the urban-rural connections. The project aims to lay the foundation for the solutions developed to be usable upon its completion for full scale construction projects. 

What is an Early Adopter City? To understand and overcome individual barriers implementing Build-in-Wood solutions, seven very different European cities have been selected as Early Adopter Cities. They range from capital metropoles to mid-size and small mountain cities, making one thing clear: Any city can decide to build in wood and benefit from it. The Early Adopter Cities take a leading role in the project, receiving detailed context analyses, workshops and implementation support from the Consortium and Advisory Board. Their stories shall inspire cities around the world to rethink construction and social responsibility. They include: Brasov, Romania; Trento, Italy; Innsbruck, Austria; Copenhagen, Denmark; Trondheim, Norway; London, United Kingdom; Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Results, outcomes and impacts. 1) Optimised materials (resource-efficient, enhanced qualities), 2) Development of a structural, customisable building system platform as well as guidelines for incorporation of ICT tools in the design process, 3) Performance and environmental documentation of developed materials, systems and solutions (e.g. LCA, LCC, S-LCA), 4) Demonstration projects, 5) Stakeholder co-creation and scenario building workshops in selected European cities, 6) Training for entrepreneurs, SMEs and researchers, 7) An open source design guide (for private clients and local/ national authorities), 8) Overview and evaluation of relevant legislation, public regulations and standards, 9) Model for enhancement of rural-urban connection.

The project thus foster the following impacts: 1) Reduction of GHG emissions through increased use of the sustainable, resource- and energy-efficient material wood, 2) A rising demand for forest-based construction products will provide incentives for expanding and maintaining forests, 3) Creating economic opportunities and new ways of using wood and nature-based materials in construction sector, 4) Increase of innovation in the building industry (materials, building systems and processes), 5) Higher quality of buildings (including health and indoor climate​, 6) Green and decent jobs in rural and urban areas through a sustainable wood value chain.

The Build-in-Wood consortium, coordinated by the Danish Technological Institute, consists of 21 partners from 11 different countries, covering the entire wood value chain from factory to final construction. This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 862820.

 The online portal is an automatic method for identifying illegally cut timber transports from Romania. The users are able to observe alerts from satellites indicating information and once every few days (between 2 and 7 days depending on the satellite) any change in the aerial image associated with the forest vegetation in Romania. The portal also accesses the SUMAL database of the Ministry of Water and Forests in real time. From this database, information is extracted to be processed in the internal system, about the enhancement documents on wood harvests, the locations from where the timber transports are loaded and the information related to these points.The permits on wood harvest became digitalized, therefore all harvesting activity can be checked by satellite monitoring while the transports must obtain a unique code before leaving the place of loading. This code is only obtained after the transport information has been entered into the system, including the location where the code was requested.
The portal, through further developments, also contains an API (set learned of rules), which allows automatic access to all information publicly presented on this portal (layers, transport coordinates and related metadata, enhancement documents, etc.), so that other interested actors can make analyzes that will lead to stopping illegal logging.

The threat of forests by various harmful microorganisms is growing due to changing climate conditions and spreading of non-native pathogens and pests.. Simultaneously the relevance of biological methods of monitoring and preventing forest degradation is increasing in the face of the chemical’s use restrictions. The main aim of the project is the development of an innovative device (electronic nose/ e-NOS), based on a matrix of broad-band electrochemical sensors and neural networks that would detect and analyse the odor-based signals e.g. pheromones of certain insect species. The examples of pathogens and pests addressed in the project include Dendrolimus Pini (L.) and Phytophthora oomycetes.
The developed system delivers comprehensive and complex information which allows to create a neural classifier (using artificial intelligence). The dedicated software was developed to perform the analysis of the data and create a database – library of signals, which will allow to detect the analytes sought in the field. For each application foreseen in the project (analysis of specific smells), dedicated sensory matrices were prepared.   

The system consists of four components:

• remote sensing data - quick access to current and historical data, enabling the user to compare satellite images from different periods;
• complementary data - cadastral data and detailed forest inventory data from management plans (FMP);
• remote sensing data products - geometric layers resulting from the processing of satellite images, showing the condition and health status of vegetation and forests;
• geospatial analyses - juxtaposition of remote sensing data products with cadastral data and detailed forest inventory data, enabling to identify inconsistencies between the actual state of the forest and the state recorded in databases, as well as recent changes.

The entire solution is based on an intuitive map portal for users, which is used to generate various types of maps, including maps of forests and tree cover, forest changes, maps of forest types, maps of forest condition, maps of crown density, maps of aboveground forest biomass and the extent of stand damage due to windstorms, fires, floods and insect infestations. Users of the system have access to current and archival satellite images, and they can compare different types of maps with complementary data as well as upload their own data sets.