Innovative forest road data for improving economic accessibility of Boreal forest resources (KA1024)
Funded by Karelia CBC 2014-2020

Objective of the project

Identifying the potential solutions to solve the bottlenecks and barriers of forest road network harming the cross-border wood trade.

Main activities

• Stakeholders consultation to identify the different needs, expectation and capacities regarding forest roads and logging activities. Stakeholders will be public organization (Ministry of Natural Resources of the Republic of Karelia, Finnish Forest Center, research centers) and private companies (logging and logistic sector, wood users, road construction and maintenance companies, data providers). • Conducting a review of available open source and producing demonstration layers. Different possibilities to use data will be presented to the stakeholders to see the attractiveness of them. Feasibility studies will be conducted. Data acquisition plan will be dressed for further operation. • Defining the area to conduct a pilot project under regular project for a proof concept, as well as need for capacity building and other relevant activities.

Achievements

The main achievements of the project are the interest group analysis, feasibility study and pilot project area analysis. In the interest group analysis, the stakeholders working in the field of forest road planning, construction and maintenance, as well as organizations developing the industry, were first identified and researched to better understand the different roles they have in this field. In addition, some of the most relevant stakeholders were taken for deeper consultation, so that the different needs and challenges related to the situation of forest roads could be fully understood. In the feasibility study, different solutions for improving the capacitites of organizations were studied, as well as data availibility for being able to utilize these solutions was tested. Various demonstration layers for forest road planning were produced and presented to stakeholders, which enabled to understand the feasibility of proposed solutions. In the pilot project analysis phase, different organizations were consulted regarding their interest to engage into future capacity building activities, as well as identifying the areas (locations) that could be best utilized in piloting the solutions proposed in the feasibility study. The Logroad -micro project was succesfull in researching the situation with forest roads both in North Karelia and the Republic of Karelia regons, as well as in proposing potential solutions to improve the capacities of organizations involved.