The International Journal of Forest Engineering calls for articles in the domain of Digitalization.
The core question addressed within this special issue is how digital automation and IT-based applications can be used and made applicable to benefit the wood supply chain. Both are of growing importance due to the:
- need to enhance and guarantee the sustainability of forest operations in a rapidly changing world;
- increasing global demand for timber while there is a decline in the suitable workforce;
- increased complexity in decision making related to the dynamic characteristics of natural systems and the fact that many and sometimes conflicting objectives should be considered, such as economical (e.g., market value of services), ecological (e.g., protection of drinking water) and social (e.g., recreation) ones;
- need to find suitable management solutions for specific emerging climate-related issues (e.g., management after extreme disturbance events);
- fact that assumptions and calculations are often uncertain and therefore require a robust sensitivity analysis to assess alternative scenarios within a short time (need for efficient models);
- increased availability of large data volumes (big data) which facilitate further use, i.e. machine learning techniques.
More details can be found at the journal's website: Special Issue Digitalization
