Tag Archive for: forestry management

Event report – T4E presents at biomass heating fair Progetto Fuoco

TECH4EFFFECT Italian consortium partners, the national alliance of forest companies, CONAIBO, and the national research council, CNR IBE, attended the world’s leading biomass heating industry event, Progetto Fuoco, in Verona, Italy in February to present the TECH4EFFECT project and SILVISMART Efficiency Portal by focusing on efficient wood procurement.

TECH4EFFECT promotes and creates methods, tools, business models and digital solutions to encourage increased wood production and environmental efficiency for many uses within the wood value chain, including biomass heating.

National Assembly opens event

President of CONAIBO, Livio Bozzolo, opened the National Assembly of Italian forest enterprises at the Progetto Fuoco event which met for the purposes of information sharing and discussion. Lawyer Alessandro Franco addressed the critical issues of safety within the forestry sector, while the new European Union Timber Regulation was presented by the Technical Director of CIFORT-CONAIBO, Luca Canzan. Major of the Carabineri and Commander of CITES team of Vicenza, Luca Stella, gave other specific Italian normative updates involving the sector.

Key forestry representatives discuss safety and timber regulations

T4E Partner at Progetto Fuoco 2020

The TECH4EFFECT workshop, which was the second part of the meeting, was held after the assembly. CNR IBE participant, Dr Natascia Magagnotti, gave a general presentation on the TECH4EFFECT project highlighting the main results achieved to date, while CONAIBO representative for TECH4EFFECT, Dr Giulio Cosola, presented the SILVISMART Efficiency Portal under the title “Techniques and technologies for an efficient wood procurement”.

SILVISMART efficiency portal is explained by Giulio Cosola

SILVISMART

SILVISMART, a major deliverable of TECH4EFFECT, has developed a forestry data efficiency portal based on the collection of real-time data from forestry operations for business intelligence and decision support.

Collected data is systemised and transformed into valuable information, which is secure, and presented in pictorial graphs aiming to transfer better knowledge and control over a harvesting operation. The data collector has full control on what data is shared, taking care of any GDPR issues. 

Participation interest shown

The workshop was well attended by many forest enterprises using mechanized harvesters which potentially makes it is easier to provide data transferred from the onboard computers in harvester cabs.

Cosola said that Italy typically had a combination of both mechanized harvesters and motor manual means, even for technologically advanced and modern enterprises.

“This is due to its mountainous terrain and naturalistic forest contexts where felling operations are carried out by chainsaws and tractors, which are still an important part of the wood logging process in the country,” he explained.

He emphasized that new enterprises with modern harvester forwarder machines showed a keen interest in joining the project when the TECH4EFFECT Mapping App became active. 

“Data would then be able to be sent to the portal account of the operator in a way that would be possible to sync data by location (object) and operator/machine, as well,” he said.

The event which gathered relevant parties was deemed a success in that it allowed for constructive discussion and exchange which was specifically relevant to the TECH4EFFECT project.

New publication out now! Productivity in Mechanizing Early Tending in Spruce Seedling Stands

Johanna Routa from TECH4EFFECT partner LUKE Finland and two of her colleagues – Yrjö Nuutinen and Antti Asikainen – recently published a study on a comparison of the productivity of mechanized tending with the Cutlink device to manual tending in spruce seedling stands in central Finland.

For this publication “Productivity in Mechanizing Early Tending in Spruce Seedling Stands” the productivity, fuel consumption and quality of seedling stands after pre-commercial thinning were measured.

 

 

You can find the full article on the website of the Croatian Journal of Forest Engineering (CROJFE) or as PDF on our website!

 

 

Routa J., Nuutinen Y. and A. Asikainen

Productivity in Mechanizing Early Tending in Spruce Seedling Stands

Croatian Journal of Forest Engineering (CROJFE), 2019

Volume 40, issue 1, pages 1-10

https://doi.org/10.5552/crojfe.2020.619

Event report – Forestalia 2019

October 26th and 27th the “Forestalia” fair was held at the Piacenza Expo (Italy). On the 26th CONAIBO and CNR, the Italian Research Council, jointly organized a workshop for the Italian forestry sector titled “Forest mechanization in the new Millennium: progress and precision tools for the Italian forest enterprises“.

Introductions, presentations and a live demonstration 

The workshop agenda included an introduction by representatives of the regional and national sector association, including the National President of the main national forest owners’ association, Mr. Caliari (for Federforeste), the National President of the largest farmer’s association, Mr. Coldiretti, and the local representative of another important farmer’s association, Dr. Comellini (for Confagricoltura).

This session was followed by the presentations on the situation of Italian forest enterprises highlighting some best practice examples by Marco Baldini, the President of Piacenza Loggers’ Association and a CONAIBO member, Alberto Cadei, the CONAIBO Technical Director, and Raffaele Spinelli (CNR IBE).

Last part of the meeting was specifically devoted to TECH4EFFECT, with a presentation by Raffaele Spinelli offering a general view of the TECH4EFFECT project and its main results so far, and by Giulio Cosola (CONAIBO) giving a live demonstration of the SILVISMART Efficiency Portal named “SILVISMART Portal – concept, how it works and utility for forest enterprises”. These presentations were followed by an interactive workshop showing the SILVISMART Portal with a Q & A session. The meeting was very well received and attended by more than 100 interested parties from the area.

 

Some impression of Forestalia 2019 ((c) G. Cosola (CONAIBO) & CNR).

 

Conclusions of the Q & A with regional foresters

After the debate with foresters at the Forestalia 2019, the following six important conclusions can be made:

  • Push for a more thorough management of Italian forests as currently only about 30 % of the national wood increment is used.
  • Take advantage of the big economic and commercial potential (i. e. new employees, etc.) behind all of this uncut wood.
  • Recover the Italian forest production chain and make it more competitive in a increasing globalized system.
  • Improve forest and property legislation – since in Italy wide forest properties are abandoned creating a world of small forest properties, whose owner often live abroad, sometime don’t know how to actually own a forest overseas and/or simply don’t care about their property.
  • Improve the safety trainings for foresters.
  • Improve big data management to improve the efficiency of forest enterprises – SILVISMART can actually fill this gap if regional specifics are accounted for.

Some more impressions of Forestalia 2019 ((c) G. Cosola (CONAIBO) & CNR).