Project description
Paving the way for a resilient future for Europe’s forests
Europe’s forests, vital for competitiveness and sustainability, are under threat. Growing global wood demand, biodiversity loss, and climate change are jeopardising their health and economic viability. With these challenges in mind, the EU-funded OptiForValue project will develop an interconnected modelling framework, participative engagement, and cutting-edge technologies to foster sustainable, resilient forest value chains. With case studies spanning Austria, Finland, Spain, and Sweden, the project aims for a transformative impact: a 10 % reduction in wood damage, increased value addition by 3 %, and a bolstered forestry workforce by 5 %. Through collaboration across research institutes, universities, and companies, OptiForValue promises a sustainable, resilient future for Europe’s forests and their stakeholders.
Objective
Forestry is a potential pathway to strengthening European competitiveness, reducing dependence on non-renewable, unsustainable resources, enhancing the circular bioeconomy, and understanding the bioeconomys ecological boundaries. Europes forests and their value chains, however, face diverse challenges, including increasing global wood demand, biodiversity loss, and increasing biotic and abiotic threats to forest health and economic revenue caused by climate change. OptiForValues ultimate goal is to foster transition to more sustainable and resilient forest-based value chains, by using a unique, interconnected modelling framework involving strong participative engagement and novel scientific approaches, including early warning indicators of biotic and abiotic risks, adaptive forest management strategies, remote sensing and artificial intelligence for agile forest operations, and integrated value-chain optimisation and life cycle assessments. The expected outcomes include increased value addition, competitiveness, sustainability, and resilience of European forest-based value chains, particularly in regions already or forecast to be impacted by climate change over the coming decades. OptiForValue will accelerate this transition by enhancing the sustainability, resilience, and profitability of regional value chains in Central European, Mediterranean and boreal, via case studies in Austria, Spain, Sweden, Finland. Significant long-term impacts are expected to be achieved, including a 10% reduction in wood damage, with a subsequent increase in wood harvesting (240 M annually), 3% value addition from better quality control (350 M annually), 5% increase in the forestry workforce in areas affected by climate change, and 510% reduction in fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The consortiums research institutes, universities and companies are well equipped to advance the state of the art, validate solutions through case studies, and upscale results.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesecologyecosystems
- social scienceseconomics and businesseconomicsbioeconomy
- social scienceseconomics and businessbusiness and managementemployment
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringenergy and fuels
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesforestry
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-JU-RIA - HORIZON JU Research and Innovation ActionsCoordinator
00790 Helsinki
Finland