Division of Forest and Forest Resources
SFI SmartForest: Bringing Industry 4.0 to the Norwegian forest sector
End: sep 2028
Start: oct 2020
SmartForest will position the Norwegian forest sector at the forefront of digitalization resulting in large efficiency gains in the forest sector, increased production, reduced environmental impacts, and significant climate benefits. SmartForest will result in a series of innovations and be the catalyst for an internationally competitive forest-tech sector in Norway. The fundamental components for achieving this are in place; a unified and committed forest sector, a leading R&D environment, and a series of progressive data and technology companies.
Project participants
Terje Gobakken Carolin Fischer Kjersti Holt Hanssen Stephan Hoffmann Csongor Horvath Stefano Puliti Johannes Rahlf Heikki Korpunen Katrin Zimmer Maciej Wielgosz Mostafa Hoseini Fride Høistad Schei Helle Ross Gobakken Steffan Lloyd Nicolas Cattaneo Stephanie Eisner Lennart Noordermeer Alexander Scharf Jeroen Van Houtte Ole Martin Bollandsås Maria Åsnes Moan Erik Næsset Hans Ole Ørka Oliver Tomic Yohann Jacob Sandvik Marie-Claude Jutras-Perreault Julius Wold Håkon Næss Sandum Svetlana Saarela Kim Andre Anstensen Nielsen Arnoldo Frigessi Manuela Zucknick
Consortium
Centre host:
Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIBIO)
Norwegian research partners:
Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU)
University of Oslo (UiO).
International research partners:
Mistra Digital Forest (Sweden)
FPInnovations (Canada)
RIF Institute for Research and Transfer (Germany).
Norwegian industry partners:
| Status | Active |
| Start - end date | 01.10.2020 - 30.09.2028 |
| Project manager | Rasmus Astrup |
| Division | Division of Forest and Forest Resources |
| Total budget | 234 Mio. NOK |
| Funding source | The Research Council of Norway |
The SmartForest Intended Impacts
SmartForest focuses on improving the forest sector in Norway. The centre aims to generate a better understanding of the forest value chain and implement digitalization to work smarter, more efficiently, and with more precision in forestry.
The efforts of SmartForest will result in a long-term, world-leading, industry-focused R&D environment focusing on enabling technologies for the digital transformation of the forest sector. This center will help improve the forest industry’s competitiveness and sustainability, ensuring the sector can thrive in the face of global challenges.
► Digital technologies
Ensure that the Norwegian forest sector will be managed using leading edge digital technologies
► Create innovations
Apply the emerging enabling technologies in the forest sector to create a series of innovations that can be operationalized and commercialized by the SmartForest partners
► Improve value production
Improve information, increased production efficiency, improved environmental efficiency, and overall increased value production from the forest-based value chain
► Improve recruitment
Improve the recruitment of professionals and young researchers in forestry
► Contribute to the green shift
Contribute towards therequired green shift in the Norwegian industry by:
-
facilitating increased value creation and international competitiveness of the Norwegian forest sector, and
-
create the foundation for a Forest-tech sector in Norway.
Workpackage Structure
SmartForest is the next leap in efficiency and environmental performance of the forest sector and will be enabled by digitalization and knowledge-based management.
The primary objective of SmartForest is to improve the efficiency of the Norwegian forest sector by enabling a digital revolution transforming forest information, silviculture, forest operations, wood supply and the overall digital information flow in the sector. The digital transformation will be enabled by a series of innovations that will form the foundation for the development for of a strong Forest-tech sector in Norway.
SmartForest is divided in six work packages, and within each we have defined tasks which will be annually updated.
► WP1: Forest Information
The focus in WP1 is the development of improved forest information. Combining data from emerging technologies can lead to significant improvements in forest information, creating continuously updated, more comprehensive forest information covering a broad spectrum of variables and harvesting systems.
► WP2 Precision Silviculture
WP2 focuses on cost-efficient digital decision support systems for precision silvicultural practices. By applying emerging technologies, precision silviculture will deliver operationally feasible and cost-efficient production systems.
►WP3 Forest Operations and Wood Supply
WP 3 develops and integrates digital planning, operational tools and information systems to optimize forest operations end-to-end. These elements enable data-driven planning, safer and lower-impact operations, resilient, and fully traceable, quality-assured wood supply chains that meet regulatory and market requirements.
►WP4 Environmental information
WP 4 develops systems and tools to enable sufficient mapping of environmental data covering the entire harvest planning, operation and post-processing. Together, these methods and systems enable the procurement of georeferenced environmental datasets to support certification, monitoring and adaptive management.
► WP5 AI methods
WP 5 consolidates AI development across modalities to support forest operations: advanced point-cloud and image models, real-time lidar processing for robotic applications, and LLM-orchestrated decision-support layers integrating model outputs and user inputs.
► WP6 From Research to Innovation
WP6 coordinates activities that translate research outputs into innovations and integrate across production chains. It covers innovation management, as well as deployment in demonstration areas and documentation systems.
