Forest

The COOPWOOD project aims to foster cross-border cooperation between actors involved in vocational training in the field of wood and its business, allowing a substantial improvement of contents, methods, tools and training offerings that respond more to the demand of its value chain. The objective is simply to improve the qualification levels and skills of the different agents in the wood sector, mainly trainers, students and technicians, in order to facilitate a new revival for a sector in decline, unable to adapt to the new market trends and to the society in general.
Also, the project aims to improve the mobility of students and workers. The improvement of the labor market access, on both border sides, will enable new business, taking advantage of the potential of both sides of the border, creating the most competitive work teams. Another purpose of the COOPWOOD is to generate systems of equivalence between competencies and qualifications and generate tools to direct access the information on employment, the legislation and the relevant sector information; this helps to eliminate the existing barriers and facilitate the mobility of the stakeholders and the collaboration between companies in the cross-border space.

The first training methodology has been developed in the wood sector based on collaborative challenges.
The first transboundary working group on wood training has been established.

The main results will be :
Formation of cross-border network of key actors in wood training for the exchange of potentials.
-Development of new training methodology for Professional Training, 5 training courses on innovative topics, 4 new wood products and 5 software supporting industrial management, in addition to 1 platform on wood and training and 1 employment observatory.
All this aims to promote and facilitate the mobility of at least 580 people.

With two newly developed forwarder prototypes, five new and different modules were implemented and tested in the fields under varying production conditions within Europe. These modules are developed towards raising the productivity of the machine, improving the working conditions and lowering the ecological impact of the forwarding process. The modules contain a hydrostatic-mechanical transmission system (HVT, M1), a suspended cabin (M2), an energy regenerating and recuperating hydraulic crane (M3), a triple bogie axle for wet terrain, that can be used with or without tracks (M4) and a monitoring system to surveil and document the machine status to derive further information of production and environment (M5).

With the tests of prototype machines, the aims of development could be proven by the field tests, that were executed within the study. Especially the effect on the soils on sensitive areas, also without the use of bogie tracks, as it was tested on distributed bark beetle infested stands in Saxony, was one field of application where the advantages of tire-based working, longer bogie axle and high contact surface were positively assessed. With more experiences, the revelation of further advantages or limitations are expected.

Within the field tests, all modules of the “Triple Bogie Prototype” (M3, M4, M5) were assessed with a positive effect. For wetland (Saxony) or even peatland working conditions (Scotland, Lithuania), the triple bogie showed advantages in technical accessibility but also the lower environmental impact on sensitive areas. Without the use of tracks, especially under varying, partly sensitive soil conditions the system has advantages towards other systems as the machine was able to relocate itself on own axle for long distances and provide the protection effect. The protection of ditches while entering forest stands was a positive additional effect of the system that could be observed as it acts like a built- in bridge. Due to potential high load capacity of both base machines, also a high productivity was recorded that fit or exceeded literature findings. The crane system (M3) which has also a high positive influence on the fuel consumption could withstand a fuel consumption reduction effect on its own, at is was proven under laboratory conditions.

• With higher productivity, now due to higher driving speeds and in course of a lowered fuel consumption, the second, “HVT- Prototype” (M1, M2, M5) setup presented its advantages especially under longer hauling distances with high possible driving speeds. This machine can be especially be efficiently used in regions with low road densities.
• With the monitoring system (M5), the environmental impact and the machine behavior was actively observed and evaluated. As the here implemented iFOS system is freely configurable, it was successfully implemented in the project and could for instance be further introduced as modular environmental documentation system by forest enterprises or in public services. The separately developed data-based crane scale as stand-alone or industry 4.0 service, makes it possible to use the forwarding information in logistic applications like the energy wood supply in the wood chip logistic (Geiger et al. 2019).

This project was one of the longest wooden bridges of this type in Germany that supports heavy vehicle traffic:
Approach bridges are made of spruce glulam (laminated) in form of timber-concrete composite
Construction creates a large shore area that ensures a rapid drainage in case of floods
The arch beams made of glulam fit in the natural environment

Wood is a suitable material also for big and long bridges in combination with other materials and with profound wood protection.

 Innovative solutions for constructive wood protection
The arch bridge is laterally covered with larch. The upper side is covered with a titanium zinc sheet.
Concepts for the subsequent use of the wood for the bridge within the framework of cascade use of wood were established

Forest information is standardized so that actors engaged in the forest sector could develop and use harmonized information systems. Although basic concepts and measurement units have been defined for decades, almost every actor has implemented them differently in their information systems. Converting and transferring information is difficult or almost impossible between systems. Forest information standards facilitate the use of open materials and data transfer between actors. This improves operational efficiency and international competitiveness of forest sector.

The development of information exchange interfaces is not finished. The goal is a situation where all forest industry systems would read, write and send via a forest information standard.

Standard defines the structure, data types and codes used in different schemes. Forest information standards are based on XML-format (geometry: GML).
Data to be exchanged with standards is: special feature data, forest compartment data, forest use declaration, timber trade, harvesting and operations. The projects outcome is: documentation, schemas, guidelines, practises. The outcome will be written XML files which are transferred between different systems. XML is used as it is international data standard, a method to structure electronic documents. XML-documents (=files) are readable and alloes to import data into all systems capable of reading such documents. The structure of XML-documents can be validated automatically so it follows its definitions (=schema).

The overall goal of BayWIS was the construction of a GIS-supported information system which supports the Bavarian Forest Administration in fulfilling their tasks through recording, information, planning and analysis tools.
BayWIS therefore needs to supply and administrate professional forest data with and without special reference together with geo-basic-data and relevant professional data of other offices centrally and redundance-free.
BayWIS is directly connected to the constant optimization of professional task processes.

Qualitative goals of BayWIS are to supply a highly professional, employee-, forest owner-, customer- and citizen-friendly information & communication support. Thereby, the public conception of the completion of tasks of the forest administration is improved and the acceptance through the appliers is increased. Thereby, cost decreasing effects might be possible through the extensive bundling of the information & communication support of all tasks in the forest administration.

In March 2011, the company INTEND Geoinformatik GmbH won the tender for the project with their product WebLine Mobile (WLM). WLM is based on the mobile framework MobileADF of the company ESRI and the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).  For BayWIS, WebLine Mobile was extended by an online-component. When using the offline version, the program relies on a local to be synchronized mapcache. In the online version, it uses the direct requests of the map pictures to the ArcGIS server. Therefore, the complete amount of geodata (incl. open geospatial consortium (OGC)-services) is available online in the statewide extent.

The NavLog GmbH (on behalf of the forestry and timber industry) creates a dataset of forest roads in Germany which classifies them on their suitability for the exposure to timber trucks.

The quality of the data constantly improves through the updates of the local responsible persons.
They provide GIS, WebMap Services and data for navigation devices.

As opposed to the suppliers of the public road datasets, the NavLog GmbH doesn’t survey the information about the suitability of the roads with specially equipped vehicles.
Instead, the data is surveyed from professionals, such as local foresters, and put together by NavLog like a puzzle. Since 2010, NavLog provides more than 450.000 km of classified forest roads cross-border.

The flow of data between the partners of forestry and the timber industry is an unpredictable obstacle in terms of time in the supply chain. Still today, lists of wood and factory dimension protocols are passed along analogically on paper. Regional individual solutions for digital data transfer exist, but they are expensive compared to the sold number of products.
ELDAT is publicly available and updated by the Kuratorium für Waldarbeit und Forsttechnik e.V. since 2002.

Digitalization process with optimizing interfaces still in process.

ELDAT is the first national standard, which enables a consistent communication between all involved partners of the process chain. It enables the transfer of single timber data (formerly the list of wood) as well as the transmission of process defining information such as e.g. contract, billing or delivery data in shortest time and therefore is an important part in the supply-chain-management.

On the state and cluster level there have been established different portals for private forest owners, to show them the opportunity to contact the local foresters and inform themselves about forest management and all questions to do with forest ownership.
The portals are an approach to reach out to forest owners without professional expertise and any relations to forestry by offering them an easily accessible channel for information.

It is important not just to show the addresses of your personal available state forester and forest owner association but also to include entrepreneurs and other actors in the forest business.

Forest owner portals are an innovative and effective way especially to address the “new forest owners”.

In KomSilva, tools for a goal-oriented and efficient discourse with forest owners are being developed. Target groups are stakeholders and organizations who activate and address forest owners. Mostly forestry associations should profit from the project, but also service providers and other stakeholders. Communication with forest owners is a key asset towards mobilization. Existing instruments are being adjusted and new tools like online-training, online-consulting concepts and social media strategies for consulting and communication are being created and already successfully tested.

Existing instruments for approaching forest owners and communicate with them are being investigated and evaluated according to their effectiveness. Thereby, a collaborative approach is being pursued. It comprises an advisory committee with experts from practice and an active involvement via interviews, a large-scale online-survey and workshops. Experiences in activating forest owners and in public relations are being collected and practicable factors of success are being identified. Arguments for the activation of forest owners are being developed to sensitize forestry associations also for the new task fields.

As described in §15 BWaldG forestry associations are “renowned forest management cooperatives, forest management federations and renowned forestry unions”. Also, forest owner associations and forest farmer associations are rated among forestry associations.
Associations are supposed to improve the management in the affiliated forest areas and in the estates selected for afforestation. Especially they should help to overcome the disadvantages of small areas, unfortunate area shapes of ownership fragmentation, conflict situations, insufficient forest development or other lacks of structure (§16 BWaldG).

 Due to the changing structure in forest ownership, a growing demand for wood and the effects of climate change, forestry associations have to face new challenges.
More personnel with expertise is needed to implement the growing amount of forestry measures needed due to climate change
Forestry association need to improve their competitiveness on the market and their ability to establish a working network for timber harvest and marketing of the affiliated forests. Especially, this is important to support forest owners with very small forests, whose transaction costs are usually too high to make harvesting profitable

A forestry association needs to enable a considerable improvement in the management of the affiliated estates regarding size, location and connection (§18 subsection 1 BWaldG).
Forest owner assocations in Bavaria are leading in whole Germany in terms of high educated staff, organization, IT-systems and efficiency.