Rosewood

Groupama Forêts Assurances is a solidarity and responsible mutual insurance company specialising in forest insurance.
Since the 1960s, the mutual has been investing in the purchase of real estate in Bordeaux. It was able to compensate silviculturists following the storms.  
Since 2017, the State has decided to stop helping foresters to restore their forests after a storm has passed. It is necessary to promote forest insurance as one of the first acts of sustainable management in order to provide financial resources to restore the forest after a disaster and to secure the heritage.
Their objective today is to extend forest insurance to any forest owner with a sustainable management document.

 - securing forest investment
- propose a complement to preventive action (fire)
- allow reforestation after a disaster
- contribute to the harmonisation of sustainable management criteria in Europe
- better guarantee of producing wood in the future in the face of storm and fire risks.

The contracts apply to fire, storm and civil liability risks in the forest.
Guarantee levels are in several forms:
- flat-rate compensation for the reconstitution per hectare, which ranges from €500/ha to €5,000/ha depending on the type of stand and the region
- fixed compensation for the reconstitution and in addition compensation for the value of the damaged wood (100€/ha/year for the first 15 years or 150€/ha/year for the first 20 years).
The packages are adapted according to the species and the forest and therefore applies to all forests in France.
To date, only 5% of forest owners are insured; however, the level of risks in the forest is constantly rising.
The European participation envisaged for the future would reduce the cost of contributions and thus allow all owners to have access to insurance. To do this, needs must be assessed on the basis of a sample of European countries and European insurance models must be adaptable to each Member State. 

Xyloforest is a research, innovation and service platform for cultivated forest systems, products and materials. Its objective is to contribute to the adaptation of forest resources to climate change. Its scientific objective is to improve knowledge and implement innovative solutions to increase the use of wood in construction, improve wood quality and develop green chemistry. The scope covers the entire forest-wood chain: Xylomic: genomics and tree phenotyping Xylobiotech: forest biotechnologies Xylosylve: innovative silvicultural systems Xyloplate: advanced wood engineering Xylomat: Composite wood-based products and biosourced materials Xylochem: Wood chemistry and bio-refinery Xyloforest developed in 2011 following the call for projects “Equipement d'Excellence” of the future investment program (ANR-10-EQPX-16). The project is scheduled to end in 2020, and the grant received for its entire duration is €10.2 million. The aid is distributed among the various partners for the purchase of equipment. Each technical platform has a laboratory with specific equipment to host new collaborative projects. Laboratories can provide the scientific community with premises, or data and host measurement and experimental equipment. They can also contribute their experience for product and service developments (e.g. STRADIVERNIS project for the development of an industrial varnish based on rosin and vegetable oil from the Xylomat platform). The XYLOFOREST platform is a support for teaching on forests and wood with more than 130 students trained, including 57 doctoral students since 2013.

Futurobois is a registered association, operating by voluntary membership.
The objective of the interprofessional association is to unite professionals in the forest-wood-paper sector within an association to exchange and meet. Futurobois' main mission is to promote and inform professionals, local authorities and the general public about the use of wood products.
They help member companies to find solutions to enable their economic, technical, human and environmental development.
Futurobois' team consists of 5 people.

Futurobois operates mainly thanks to funding from the region, the State, Europe and the national interprofessional organisation (France Bois Forêt). The remainder comes from membership fees and services rendered. They are the 4th largest interprofessional association in France in terms of number of member companies and 8th in terms of budget.
They provide technical knowledge on wood materials to architects and try to better understand their needs in wood construction.
Assistance is offered to project managers to remove the blocking points concerning the use of wood in construction (fire risk, insect,...).

In June 2018, the interprofessional association had 237 members in 42 sectors, including forestry, primary processing, secondary processing and construction. The association's actions are the preparation and animation of:  
visits to sawmills, factories,
days of visits around wood processing: from the forest site to the secondary processing,
meetings dedicated to professionals by sector of activity (e.g. in 2018 meetings of furniture professionals),
steering committee for the development of poplar in New Aquitaine,
study trips abroad.
These visits allow companies to meet and give them better visibility with public or private project managers and elected officials.
The interprofessional organisation also helps companies to secure their supply and comply with regulatory frameworks for small companies. They offer them a catalogue of training courses on different themes (human resources, accounting, etc.)

The objective of the project is to provide a set of tools adapted to the needs of very small forestry and logging companies. ForLog is a forest site management software connected to a remote database accessible via the web. The software allows structured messages to be sent to field teams (mission orders) and customers (sales slips). A mobile application on a smartphone allows to enter data concerning construction site activities. The service offer is proposed to companies in the form of a subscription.

It is an innovative solution to improve the quality of silviculture and forestry operations accessible to very small, poorly computerized companies, and a solution that enhances the possibilities offered by the web, mobile Internet, computerized mapping.

All operations concerning the commercial (estimates, invoices), administrative (site declarations), operational (site maps, digitisation of exchanges between operators and site managers) and financial (site balance sheets) management of the sites are proposed by ForLog, which is an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) adapted to the organisation of very small forest companies. The objective of the tool is to limit the time spent on site management and improve the economic performance of forest companies. User feedback highlights:
- Easy handling of the tool;
- Time saved during administrative tasks;
- Ability to quickly access summary data on team activities (working hours, productivity, progress);
- Significant savings in travel time to access construction sites and locate boundaries;
- Improvement of the company's image towards its partners.

Finland has a lot of peatland and other areas with soft terrain. The challenge is that the soft terrain does not enable harvesting in the summertime.

The stability of the harvester comes from its eight wheels and active stabilization system. The patented stabilization system is based on detecting the crane direction and position, on the basis of which the rear frame is pressed in the working direction. Pressing the rear wheels against the ground and the weight of the rear frame improve the machine’s stability significantly when working on the side of the machine – also when the machine is moving.

The Cabin leveling, balances the cabin, also in difficult terrain. The frame of the machine consists of three parts linked by rotating joints. The cabin is located in the middle frame, which is kept hydraulically balanced, while the front and rear frames tilt according to the terrain.

Scorpion King is a three-frame harvester equipped with a fork boom. Its balancing keeps the cabin horizontal in all conditions. In addition, visibility from the cabin is perfect thanks to large glass surfaces and as the crane does not block the view in any direction. Its double-circuit hydraulics ensure that power does not run out even in difficult conditions. The balanced machine is at its best in demanding conditions and uneven terrain.

Metsä Group photographed in 2018 with drone about 3 500 hectares of forest in southern and western Finland and utilized the data as basis for forest plans for forest owners. According to experience, the method has been developed and now the drone forest plans are being sold as an alternative to traditional forest plans. The forest plan based on information described by Drone or copter with camera challenges the traditional forest planning. The method is used in particular to get more accurate tree information.

The drone plan will be of interest to the forest owners who want to be in the front and develop new developments with forest industry. For example, in a virtual forest, the data measured in the drone will create a precise tree map, where the trees are in the right places and the tree species are correct. In virtual reality, it will better reflect the fluctuations of the wood inside the forest compartment than the traditional forest plan information. The drone design and virtual forests form an interesting pair in the future by producing new experiences for forest owners.

The measurements will provide both the amount of trees in cubic meters and the value of the wood in euros more accurately than before. With drone surveys we also get information about the amount of dead wood – it helps to preserve the important structure of forest for diversity.
The method is capable of identifying tree three species: pine, spruce and birch. The remaining deciduous tree species are logged into the category of other deciduous trees. Based on the measurement data, treatment recommendations are calculated. This drone-made plan differs from the traditional, where human being makes the treatment recommendations.
The forest plan produced by drone is particularly suitable for updating the forest plan that is about to expire.  It is also suitable for
forest owners, who are particularly interested in the amount and value of the timber.
The forest plan of the drone also benefits from a faster delivery of traditional forest plan. Delivery time is few months, which is only half of the delivery times of traditional forest plan.

CFharvest (WoodForce) is planning- and steering system for harvesting and silviculture to optimize and strengthen the supply chains of forestry. Forestry company delivers all the contracts the WoodForce-system according to the need of raw material. The contractor selects the contracts and the locations he will perform. Forest companies have decreased harvesting and average costs in Silviculture or Regeneration job types. There has been increasing productivity in the supply chain of stem wood and energy wood. Also increasing productivity in field operations in Forestry like Silviculture Harvesting Forest Services. Contractors have the ability to manage their own forestry services and receive the full benefit of all resources. Possibility to operate for multiple forest companies is important. In addition, there is less manual reporting and worksite navigation is easier. CFharvest supports a changing trend where progressive companies now contract for several forest companies and do the planning with one system. Since the contractor understands local conditions best, forest harvesting operations become more efficient: the contractor has direct control over work plans and scheduling his own fleet of harvesters and trucks.

MOTTI is a stand-level analysis tool and decision support software by Luke. It contains the key results of the growth and yield research carried out by Luke, which can be used to predict the growth of forests managed using different techniques. The software also enables making comparisons between different silvicultural methods. MOTTI can also be used to investigate the effects of forest management or non-management, selection of tree species, regeneration chains or individual silvicultural measures, for example, on forest growth, harvesting volumes, profitability of forestry or the amount of carbon sequestered by forests.

MOTTI is widely used among professional foresters, forest owners, teachers, researchers, authorities and companies in Finland. It has been updated regularly with the newest growth models. It has also been tailored for special purposes, e.g. for teaching and for calculating economic effects of forest protection. It has been published in several languages (Finnish, Swedish, English, Russian) and it has also been piloted in other countries and tree species.

The core of MOTTI is a stand-level simulator, which includes growth and yield models for e.g. natural regeneration, growth and mortality. It is designed to simulate stand development under alternative management regimes and growth conditions in Finland.
MOTTI predicts the development of the user-defined initial stand until the end of the rotation. The user can define various management schedules including management practices, such as precommercial and commercial thinnings, fertilization, and ditch network maintenance in peatland forests. The user can adjust parameters such as timing and intensity of thinning and proportions of tree species, and define the timing of final cut. Timber assortments include logs, pulpwood and energy wood compartments. If the user do not define management practices, MOTTI simulates a default management program for the stand based on the current recommendations for forestry practice in Finland.
For the economic analysis (net present value and bare land value), the user can enter stumpage prices by tree species and timber assortments, costs (e.g. costs of first commercial thinnings, fertilisation and ditch network maintenance) and interest rate. The results will be presented in the form tables, graphs and files exportable to Excel.

Mobile applications offered by different forest companies offer the possibility to observe your forest estate and forest assets on the mobile phone. The forest data is in mobile phone for private forest owners and it´s easy to log in with the bank's online banking ID.

The change of the business environment aims at better competitiveness and cost-efficiency in forest management. Mobile applications are an excellent way to encourage forest owners to take care of their forests.

Forest owners can download mobile applications to their smartphones from the internet. The application includes information about the forest assets, maps, and other key information that may be needed in the field. The application also works without a network connection.
For example, Metsä Group’s members are able to update their growing stock information by taking photos with their mobile phones. The photos are transferred for analysis in a cloud service, and they are used to calculate the growing stock information. This way when walking around in their forest estates, forest owner can update their growing stock information and request a quote to sell wood or buy forest management services right there on the spot.

With the application you can:

• view forest farm maps and aerial photos
• browse pattern information
• review the proposed measures
• acknowledge the actions taken, in which case the tree data in the pattern will be updated
• send a message to the forest expert
• take action on the request for quotation that you send from Metsäverkko.fi
• update pattern tree information with Trestima (Android only)
• navigate from one pattern to another, for example, to see urgent work
• add a note or photo to a specific location

Metsään.fi provides eServices for forest owners and forestry service providers. The online application shows the maps, forest information and, silvicultural and cutting possibilities of each forest estate and their compartments:

1. Soil and forest site type
2. Growing stock
3. Treatment proposals for a five-year period
4. Natural values (habitats of special importance)
5. Latest maps and aerial photographs with compartment borders
6. Annual growth. 

Metsään.fi also allows forest owners to apply for subsidies for improvement of young stands and declare notifications of forest use (e.eg. cuttings) by filling e-forms instead of paper ones. In addition, forest owners can contact forest service producers via the system. Metsään.fi is quite easy to use and it provides the forest owner many new flexible services, e.g. e-forms for applying subsidies. It’s a safe system, although being a public one.  A strong identification of the user is needed, use of Suomi.fi e-Identification is safe and provided by the state. Suomi.fi e-Identification contains a list of the identification tokens for example using online banking codes, mobile certificate or certificate cards

The Finnish Forest Centre collects and maintains remote sensing based data of forest resources covering the private forests. Metsään.fi is a free portal using that forest data for serving forest owners and forestry service providers. It has been found to encourage forest owners to carry out silvicultural works and generally for developing forest businesses. 

Metsään.fi in numbers in early 2020: 13,5 million hectares of forest data in the service, 108 765 forest owners have visited the service, 942 service providers have joined the service, 2461 operators use the service, 8,4 million hectares available to operators, 537 706 consents available to operators.