In the forestry industry, felling is a time-consuming and often manual process that lays the foundation for harvesting, timber supply, regrowth and nature conservation. With AI, artificial intelligence, the future of felling planning can be automated and streamlined.
On behalf of Skogsforsk, Metria has conducted a feasibility study on how today's felling planning process can be more automated. The aim is to increase the degree of automation in the planning of tracts and thus reduce the time required for field work in particular, without compromising the quality of the work.
Plot planning - an important part of the forest supply chain
In the forest industry, plot planning is an important part of the forest supply chain. Plot planning is an extensive, time-consuming and often manual process that lays the foundation for harvesting, timber supply, regrowth and nature conservation. A large part of the work is done manually, with much of the time spent in the field placing strips (markers) that show which conservation measures are to be carried out and the boundaries of the harvest.
New technologies automate manual tasks
Today's technological developments have made it possible to analyze large and complex data in new ways using AI methods. This technology is now being used in more and more industries and areas. Even forestry tract planning can be automated using various AI techniques
- We have studied the needs of the tract planning process and linked them to various AI algorithms to investigate whether the results of the AI analyses can replace manual steps in tract planning. The preliminary study shows that there is great potential for automation of several steps that today have a high degree of manual work, which would reduce the time spent on this work. Says Luke Webber and Johanna Skarpman Sundholm, who are AI experts at Metria and conducted the feasibility study.
The results show that some steps can already be automated today
The results show that some work steps of the tract planning can be automated today, while others require further field checks. Further investigation and development will be needed before the entire funnel planning is fully automated, but the automation work can begin immediately to reach the goal faster.