PILOT : MONITORING AND CONTROL TOOLS FOR FOREST OWNERS

Forest damage (such as storms, snow, pests and diseases) monitoring through standardized procedures will be developed together with METSAK, as well as easy-to-use mobile tools for these damage monitoring needs and non-wood product monitoring needs. Finally, the data will be integrated with METSAK´s metsaan.fi eService. This allows forest owners and forest specialists willing to monitor and report forest damage information to authorities a direct access to metsaan.fi’s master database.

The Finnish Forest Centre will launch a campaign in 2017 targeted at private forest owners and forest specialists to collect and report observations from forest damages through the Wuudis app seamlessly interfacing with metsaan.fi’s eService. Similar monitoring service will be implemented and tested in Czech Republic in the third year of the DataBio project with FMI. WWF Finland and numerous private forest owners strive to manage their forests favouring multiple use and high biodiversity values. WWF Finland has an ongoing campaign targeted at private forest owners to collect data from high nature value sites and other important flora and fauna that forest owners want to preserve in coming care work activities and harvesting operations. This campaign, called “Forest Challenge”, aims to secure biodiversity of forest nature.

WWF has launched a guidebook to illustrate measures to preserve biodiversity. All contracting and timber buying committed to the challenge promise to respect the measures described in the guidebook of WWF Finland. In this pilot, a database and communication procedure will be further developed on the Wuudis Service for supporting Forest Challenge´s objectives together with WWF Finland pilot users.

The main motivation for this pilot is:

• Develop forest damage monitoring app seamlessly interfacing with METSAK´s metsään.fi eService.

• Test the app in the field operations with associate partners and other stakeholders.

The main KPIs of the pilot are:

• %decrease in damages in high biodiversity site following the networking e-tools available/developed for communication and monitoring vs. what would be damage level based on working instructions on paper documents and paper maps
  • Quantify %decrease in damages.

• %Increase customer satisfaction following the networking e-tools available/developed vs. what would be the satisfaction following standard communication practices based on contractor’s present practicalities (phone, SMS, work quality report if any)
  • Quantify %increase in satisfaction for example for high biodiversity stand harvesting work quality reporting (contractor and forest owner).

• %decrease in costs following the monitoring tools available/developed for monitoring and reporting vs. what would be costs based on monitoring and reporting practices currently
  • Quantify %decrease in costs.

The amount of forest owners and other users as Wuudis Service users is now around 2 700. The amount is expected to increase as follows: 5 000 in the end of 2017, 10 000 in the end of 2018 and 50 000 in the end of 2019.