AUTOMATED FOREST AUDITING SYSTEM WITH A PORTABLE MEASUREMENT TOOL

AUTOMATED FOREST AUDITING SYSTEM WITH A PORTABLE MEASUREMENT TOOL

Project background:

Forest surveying and auditing are done manually – person uses a tape measure to determine the parameters of each tree and then calculates the forest’s value. Client wants to automate forest surveying and auditing process.

Biggest challenges: Difficulties in accuracy and speed of data acquisition: tree canopy and forest density make it difficult to collect data quickly, and smaller trees move in the wind, which makes data acquisition more difficult.

Solution:

An automated forest measurement and auditing system, as well as a portable, automatic forest measurement tool have been developed as part of the project. The solution is designed as a backpack equipped with special sensors. By walking through the area along a pre-established route, all the necessary data is obtained to calculate forest value. The portable tool performs data collection, automatic data processing, and it also retrieves results after data collection. The system can identify trees, classify tree species, and determine their volume, replacing manual measurement methods where a person measures each tree and performs approximate statistics-based volume calculations.

Key benefits:

• Automated data collection and processing – data collection time reduced 5-10 times;
• Reduced time needed for data extraction;
• Improved data accuracy – increased to over 95% (from previous 85-90%);
• Optimised workforce and efficiency.