Quick and cost-effective integrated web platform for forest inventories

Project Information

WoodStock

Grant agreement ID: 762739

DOI

10.3030/762739

Project closed

EC signature date 22 February 2017

Start date 1 March 2017

End date 30 June 2017

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Climate action, Environment, Resource Efficiency and Raw Materials

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

AGRESTA S COOP
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - WoodStock (Quick and cost-effective integrated web platform for forest inventories)

Reporting period: 2017-03-01 to 2017-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Obtaining forest inventories by traditional means is a labour intensive activity that incurs in high cost and delivery times for the wood-working industry, for forest consultants and for public and private forest owners. In fact, they are poorly suited for small and disperse plots. The web-platform offers forest inventory reports using remote technologies (LiDAR) without field surveys, reducing costs and delivery times. Through a minimum interaction, clients can obtain high quality reports of a desired area with a standard bias below 20%. WoodStock will directly contribute to an adequate management of forests and wood resources critical for perpetrating the ecosystemic services of the forests in the EU. WoodStock is currently at TRL7 with a β version successfully tested. We have conducted a Feasibility Study, to ensure its technical, commercial and financial viability.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

We have analyzed WoodStock project from 3 different points of view.
- Technically, we analyzed the intellectual property and regulations (no conflict was found), outlined a plan to reach TRL 9 (including risk management), have revised costs for target countries and contacted stakeholders.
- Commercially we can confirm the commercial feasibility in the identified sectors. We will use AGRESTA’s wide network for our target markets within Europe. We have identified several collaborators, which will use the platform as early adopters.
- Financially we have evaluated the total investment for the project in 0.79M€ and an estimated cumulative revenue of 4.7M€ by 2022. We forecast a ROI of 2.61 which validates our financial business model. These results make us continue to apply for the Phase 2 SME Instrument.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

We will include satellite and photogrammetry when LiDAR information is outdated or absent. We have approached our main technical and commercial stakeholders. During the feasibility study we have collected several letters of interest. As inventories are necessary for a large number of purposes, WoodStock has an enormous market potential with many different users that can be generically grouped into public and private segments. Thanks to our solution we will offer end users a tool that will reduce up to 80% current cost for forest inventories, save valuable time and promote sustainable forest management practices across Europe. We will allocate 16 people to work on ForestMap development and business creating up to new 4 job positions related to WoodStock development.

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