Using spatial technology for

Data Driven Forestry Management

More efficient forest management

Forestry relies on digital mapping to make informed decisions that enable organisations to be more efficient. From acquisition to inventory and operation of the full business cycle, forestry relies on an understanding of resource and operation location, distribution and status.

Aerial and Satellite imagery has been used in the Forestry sector for decades, providing intelligence, enabling monitoring, operational awareness and auditing capabilities amongst a range of use cases.

NGIS services and solutions can provide the full picture of operations and distill answers about resource health, growth rates and volumes that will enable businesses to work smarter. NGIS are experts in software development and innovative cloud solutions leveraging cutting edge products from a range of technology partners including Google and Planet.

Getting the Full Picture

Recent advances in the availability and use of UAV’s to capture aerial imagery has made an impact on Forestry, however the challenge is having access to imagery at scale to provide a full operational picture. Satellite imagery provides scale, but traditional access to satellite products has required organisations to have large minimum areas of interest and to specify tasking parameters, making imagery both costly and inflexible.

Planet has launched a fleet of micro satellites faster than any company or government in history to provide a whole-Earth dataset unmatched in its breadth and freshness.

Planet's daily imagery revolutionises the way we can monitor assets - it is orders of magintude quicker and cheaper than ever before.

- Nathan Eaton, NGIS

Case study: Brandenburg Forestry Authority

Since 2013, BFA has managed forest health, targeted insecticide use, and reduced ground-based mapping by 60% with Planet Monitoring.

"Planet’s service is valued not only by the central state forest research facility, but also by the managers and the operating field personnel of the forest districts."

- Dr. Katrin Moeller, Brandenburg Forestry Authority

Read case study

A new solution

The pillars of the forestry monitoring service from NGIS and Planet is built around the disruptive approach Planet has taken in providing satellite imagery:
  • Same Day Imagery – not only captured daily, but available to view and use within 24 hours
  • No Expensive Tasking – Planet provides a monitoring service for medium resolution imagery (3m) at high frequency. Users pick and choose the data they require
  • Always On - Planet captures all of the Earth’s surface on a daily basis, regardless of customer tasking

The Forest Monitoring Service that NGIS and Planet have architected is fully operational and can provide immediate access to content. This provides the ability to view daily satellite imagery for any location within a country and to download data for a specific area on a specific date without having to specify areas of interest to monitor. Access to all of the data required is provided through an online portal for a simple annual subscription.


With daily images you get the data you need, at the time you need, to inform operations and analyse impacts, including alleviating cloud issues through the high revisit rates. The Near Infrared band provides the capability for analytics to provide information about vegetation. With the Forest Monitoring Service, clients can get access to the unprecedented level of imagery in Planet’s entire archive.

Operational Awareness
Measurement is the first step in management. Forestry organsiations often face the challenge of managing large and disparate plots of land with a range of activities being performed. Digital mapping provides the ability to measure, analyse and communicate operations, for a full picture, to help organisations make better decisions. NGIS has worked with organisations across a range of industry verticals to provide digital mapping solutions to integrate a range of separated data feeds into a visualisation platform that provides a common operating picture of operations. Maps are a universal language and have been proven to be the best approach for communicating data. For the full plantation lifecycle of preparation, planting, pruning, thinning, felling and delivery- there is a need to understand and communicate location specific metrics for Forestry.

Analysis and Improvement
Spatial technology provides extensive capability to be able to model, analyse and predict outcomes for resource management. With the range of data products ever expanding there is tremendous potential to model vegetation to provide insights that will ultimately lead to more informed decisions. The use of cutting edge cloud technology enables analysis and improvement at scale and high frequency. The production of indices for vegetation health, quantification of damage events, plantation establishment and forest operations provides analysis that helps organisations to work smarter. NGIS has a team of data scientists that are experts in spatial information and are partnering with companies including Google to implement deep machine learning to deliver insights.
 
Digital Transformation
Digital transformation is an opportunity for Forestry organisations to squeeze more and more efficiencies out of their processes and workflows. Mapping technology is at the forefront of digital technology available for Forestry starting with rapidly evolving techniques for data acquisition using a range of sensors. The challenge with digital transformation is making it fit for purpose so that the outcome justifies the investment and the results become a business and operations enabler. NGIS specialises is business strategy for the application of digital and partnering with clients to understand their specific challenges.
 
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