Rosewood 4.0

The SIMWOOD project aims to increase the mobilisation of wood from forests and woodlands in Europe. The project reached out to stakeholders and regional initiatives with the aim of ‘waking up’ and mobilising forest owners, promoting collaborative forest management and ensuring sustainable forest functions. The project focused on seven general objectives: 1. Understand the current and future motivations of forest owners, 2. Promote forest governance and joint action of stakeholders, 3. Develop multifunctional forest management adapted to forest types, 4. Integrate forest ecosystem services while minimizing environmental impacts, 5. Establish improved adapted forest harvesting techniques, 6. Demonstrate collaborative regional initiatives and solutions, 7. Recommend tailor-made instruments to policymakers, 8. Encourage broad outreach and exploitation in EU regions.

The project involved 22 Regional Pilot Projects to test how well-adapted combinations of measures can contribute to increasing stakeholders’ capacity to mobilise more wood in the participating countries. Every Pilot Projects was to engage stakeholders and help them design projects targeted at particular issues and barriers to mobilisation. We then worked with them to evaluate the outcomes and impacts of their work. We also tested technical developments (e.g. new silviculture schemes, sustainable management computer tools, logging operation methods) and the willingness of organisations to reconsider business-as-usual actions, which provided relevant outputs to encourage new practices and strategies. The main project results are summarized in a Pilot Projects guidance report, a Handbook for wood mobilisation in Europe and an EU Policy Brief.  

SIMWOOD was a four-year EU FP7-KBBE collaborative project, with a total budget of 7.5 million euros and a 5.9 million euros EC contribution. The project consortium included 27 partners from 11 European countries: 13 national research organisations, 11 small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), 2 European organisations (EFI and JRC), 1 project support organisation. The Coordinator is LWF Bavarian State Institute of Forestry, Germany. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 613762 from 2013 to 2017.

Objectives. The core idea is to enable the construction of a mid-sized building with the lowest possible surface of forest area. A series of innovative bio-based materials, products and constructive systems are jointly developed and tested by companies and researchers. A digital framework of the 'forest to building' chain and several regional innovation roadmaps are set up to explore how wood construction can create benefits for rural areas. The special feature of the project is that it integrates the full value chain: all steps from forestry, wood processing, intermediate manufacturing and building are included, to establish the link from raw materials in rural areas up to the high-end products in the urban environment. The activities of the project can be grouped into three main topics: 1. Rural development, 2. Sustainable wood construction, and 3. Digitalization and innovation.

R&D aproach. The project partners develop and test innovative materials, products, building systems and supply chain solutions for manufacturers and end users. The proof points for industrial end users and customers include a full record of the product’s technological and sustainability characteristics, productivity, cost efficiency and competitiveness, and their demonstration in the form of two full scale demo buildings realised in operational settings. The aim is to exploit 100% of the raw materials obtained from harvested wood (i.e. solid wood, fibres, veneers, bark, sawdust, etc.) and create a building that is as much as possible based in products and sub-products from all these materials. This goal is challenging but can deliver convincing evidence that sustainable wood construction is ready to tackle three global challenges at the same time: 1. mitigation of GHG emissions of the construction sector, 2. development of sustainable high-value materials and products for urban customers, and 3. strengthening of rural development and employment.

Main outcomes. 1) Several guidance reports about building with wood addressing a holistic value chain including LCA, recyclability and eco-design of novel building products and systems, 2) Studies on wood as driver for sustainable development in Europe's rural regions, 3) A 'Forest to Building Digital Framework' (F2BDF) as digital twin of the whole value chain, 4) A series of innovative bio-based materials, products and constructive systems, including thermoplastic composites, WPC foams, waterborne coatings with fire-proof properties, structural components, structural insulation panels, façade, interior partitions and roof prototypes, etc., 5) Two full-scale demo buildings integrating these innovations, in France and in Finland, 6) A regional innovation platform for upscaling results with companies and stakeholders.

Coordinated by Tecnalia in Spain, the consortium comprises 29 partners from 12 countries including 14 companies, 12 research organizations and universities, and 3 other public and sectoral organizations. The project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 862942 from 2019-2023.

Pilke is Metsähallitus's office building in Rovaniemi, northern Finland. Pilke House's Customer Service offers information on all services provided by Metsähallitus including trail permits and hiking advice. Visitors will also find a selection of forest-themed products at Pilke Shop, next to the customer service. Science Centre Pilke downstairs introduces northern forests and the multiple ways in which we are daily connected to forests and their produce. Science Centre Pilke tells stories about the northern forests and the many connections we have with them. The building is a wooden beam-column structure, an example of ecological wood construction and Finnis architecture.

Forest Finland - participating in combating climate change

Forest Finland is the joint communication project of the Finnish forest sector, launched in May 2020. The campaign will awaken and raise peoples’ interest and encourage discussion about the forests’ role in everything in Finland. Forest Finland talks about the sustainability of the use of the northern forests and about the solutions the sustainable use of them offers. The forest will be seen on TV and heard on the radio, in outdoor advertising and in social media. Forest Finland aims to surprise, awaken interest in the forest and encourage us to discuss sustainable use of the forest. Forest Finland updates our perception of modern forestry. It presents products one could not imagine being made using wood.

The concept is based on the observation that almost everything Finns do is always accompanied by a forest. At christenings, student parties, graduations, weddings and funerals; or on holidays, events and on spare time, forest is always there - at least in the pictures. In fact, we don’t even realize that almost all of our photographs, and with it our memories, always have - at least in the background - a forest. Finns have a special relationship with the forest because it is involved in everything.Everyone can participate. One can share the information in your own organization or on social media, e.g. by sharing pictures you have taken of the forest or by highlighting solutions that the forest produces for all of us.

Mit Aja hat das Start-up-Unternehmen foldAI eine Lösung für das Monitoring des Waldzustands entwickelt, die eine konkrete Entscheidungsunterstützung für die Durchführung forstlicher Maßnahmen liefert und gleichzeitig ein umfassendes Verständnis der Waldökosysteme ermöglicht. Durch den Einsatz von modernstem maschinellem Lernen auf der Grundlage präziser Sensordaten in Echtzeit erlaubt Aja nicht nur, Waldbedrohungen sehr früh zu erkennen, sondern ihre Entstehung vorherzusagen und den weiteren Verlauf zu prognostizieren. Aja verbessert die Gesundheit, die Widerstandsfähigkeit und die bioökonomische Leistung der Wälder, indem es schlanke Prozesse für ein Ökosystemmanagement auf breiter Basis ermöglicht. Waldbewirtschaftung wird durch eine vollautomatische, hochauflösende und erschwingliche Lösung für mehr als 30 Millionen Waldbesitzer in Europa, Russland und Nordamerika unterstützt.  Aja basiert auf eingebettetem maschinellem Lernen und biochemischer und ökologischer Signalverarbeitung auf hochdimensionalen Daten. Anwendungsszenarien sind etwa die Bewertung von Umweltauswirkungen, die eine genauere Abschätzung der Umweltfolgen einer Strategie oder Politik ermöglicht, aber auch die Risikobewertung und Warnung vor akuten Bedrohungen. Darüber hinaus erlaubt die Lösung auch die Messung der biologischen Vielfalt und des Zustands von Ökosystemen. Die signifikante Auswirkung von Aja auf die Kohlenstoffreduzierung wurde von unabhängiger Seite durch The Climate Impact Forecast zertifiziert.

The startup foldAI has developed sensors to screen health status of forests providing forest managers with a rich understanding of their forest ecosystems, and a decision toolbox to deploy immediate mitigating actions. The team’s solution, Aja, used in the sensors is  a framework for ecosystem management based on deep technology. By harnessing state-of-art Machine Learning on precise, real-time sensor data, Aja can not only detect forest threats as they happen, but even predict their arising and forecast their unfolding. Aja improves forest health, resilience and bioeconomical performance by introducing lean processes to a broad ecosystem management community. It helps reducing greenhouse emissions by scaling high resolution forest management through a fully automated and affordable solution for more than 30 Million forest owners in Europe, Russia and North America. The solution builds on embedded Machine Learning, and biochemical and environmental signal processing on high-dimensional data. Use cases comprise the assessment of environmental impacts enabling greater accuracy in the evaluation of the environmental consequences of a strategy or policy, risks assessment including alerts to threats, biodiversity quantification and ecosystem health tracking. Aja’s significant carbon reduction impact has been independently certified by The Climate Impact Forecast.

Polter können in WASP abgebildet und alle relevanten Daten schnell und unkompliziert an die weiteren Akteure in der Supply Chain weitergegeben werden. Hierzu stehen mehrere Wege zur Verfügung: Direkte Eingabe über die benutzerfreundliche Weboberfläche von WASP, mobile Poltererfassung vor Ort mittels der App WASP Woodscout für Smartphones und Tablets oder, wenn Polter bereits mit einer dafür vorgesehenen Software erfasst sind, durch Importschnittstellen. Je nach Art des Polters (Rund- oder Energieholz) und der üblichen Lieferbedingungen entscheidet sich die weitere Vorgehensweise. So können die Polter direkt an das entsprechende Werk übergeben oder aber vordisponiert werden, d.h. die Spedition für den Holztransport wird ausgewählt. Dabei stehen viele Validierungsalgorithmen zur Unterstütztung zur Verfügung: Wenn z.B. ein Polter Holz enthält, welches aufgrund seiner Länge von keinem Fahrzeug des Spediteurs gefahren werden kann, warnt eine entsprechende Meldung am Bildschirm. Wenn ein Polter beispielsweise an ein Werk übergeben wurde, erfolgt eine automatische Benachrichtigung, sobald dieser abgefahren wurde. Wenn das Holz selbst zum Werk transportiert wird, können die Speditionsrolle in WASP übernommen und die Vorteile der Auftragsverwaltung und der manuellen bzw. vom Optimierungsmodul unterstützten Disposition genutzt werden.

The forest and timber industry is one of the leading industries in Germany, with 1.3 million people employed and annual sales of €181 billion. This sector is also characterised, however, by relatively low returns on its sales. Cost-reduction potentials can be realized if flows of material and informationare optimised. Using the WASP's wood logistics platform, all actors involved in the forest and timber supply chain can improve the planning horizon to optimise the supply chain across companies. Based on modern cloud technology, the WASP logistics platform seeks to interlink established software solutions with newly developed modules. It uses geodata to register and manage wood piles, and satellite navigation is integrated for use in timber transport. Wood piles can be captured by cameras, automatically geocoded, and transferred to the platform. In addition, the platform allows to handle dispatching with support for GPS (and in the future, Galileo) signals by retrieving vehicles' geocoordinates in real-time using mobile receivers, transferring them to the platform, and displaying positions and locations on a map. Integrated online map services like Navlog, OpenStreetMap (OSM), ArcGIS (ESRI), and Google Maps are also featured. The core advantage of WASP, meanwhile, is its integration of software applications that are already used in various sections along the entire value chain. 

Forstify ist ein Start-up aus der Forstwirtschaft. Die Liberalisierung des Marktes für Rohholz wurde genutzt, um mit gebündelten Kompetenzen aus dem kaufmännischen und technischen Bereich ein Unternehmen aufzubauen, das Anbieter und Einkäufer von Rohholz auf einfache Art und Weise zusammenbringt.

Das Unternehmen ist am Markt etabliert und unterstützt Waldbesitzer und Einkäufer in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz. Neben der reinen Plattform bietet Forstify auch den Direktankauf von Käferholz an und übernimmt die Vermarktung als Service direkt. Neue Themen umfassen die Möglichkeit zur Holzerfassung per App, Import und Organisation von Holzlisten, automatische Benachrichtigungen bei passenden Inseraten in der Region, ein Zahlungs-Feature innerhalb der entwickelten App sowie Beratungs- und Service-Leistungen rund um das Thema Rohholz-Verkauf. Anbieter und Einkäufer von Rohholz bekommen die Möglichkeit, einfach, schnell und kostenlos in Austausch zu treten. Dabei werden Anforderungen der Forstwirtschaft mit den Möglichkeiten moderner Internet-Technologien kombiniert.

Zielgruppen: Private und öffentliche Waldbesitzer, Forstbetriebe, Forstbetriebsgemeinschaften (FBG), Waldbesitzervereinigungen (WBV), Rundholzhändler & Exporteure, Holzvermarkter, Brennholzkäufer, Sägewerke, Papierwerke, Holzindustrie, Händler, Energieholzverarbeiter

Forstify is a forestry industry start-up. The timber market liberalisation inspired the founders to build up a company with bundled competences from the commercial and technical areas that brings together suppliers and buyers of wood in a simple, user-friendly way. The company is established on the market and supports forest owners and buyers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. In addition to the pure platform, Forstify also offers direct purchase of insect-infested timber (bark beetle) and handles marketing directly as a service. New topics include a wood measurement feature within the mobile app, easy import and organization of log lists, automatic notifications about new regional offerings, a payment feature and additional consulting and services around wood sales. Using the online marketplace, suppliers and buyers of timber can enter into an exchange easily, quickly and free of charge. In doing so, requirements of the forestry industry are combined with the possibilities of modern internet technologies.

Target groups include: Private and public forest owners, forest enterprises, forest enterprise associations (FBG), forest owner associations (WBV), roundwood traders & exporters, timber marketers, firewood buyers, sawmills, paper mills, timber industry, traders, energy wood processors.