Collaboration will delimit forest stocks

Luleå University of Technology’s researchers in AI and machine learning have started a collaboration with the company Dianthus with the goal of improving and further developing their AI-based method to be able to automatically delimit forest stands.

Division of forest landscape

Forestry means balancing many different goals such as timber production, natural values, recreation, water conservation and climate benefit. The use of the forest through various types of measures requires a decision-making basis that describes the forest and other values. Some examples of important parameters are tree age, volume, soil production capacity, tree species mix and soil moisture.

Less expensive, more objective

Today, forest stand delimitation is done by a special professional group, that uses a combination of visual preliminary delimitation with remote sensing data and final determination in the field, in connection with the collection of other parameters. However, today’s method is costly and highly dependent on the individual. Dianthus has developed a service that, for a given surface, quantifies the various parameters in a more automated way.

Fredrik Walter, CEO and analyst at Dianthus, says:

– We always strive to become even better at what we do and deliver. We have therefore started this important collaboration with the university’s researchers. Right now, the Dianthus AI-based method is being used commercially over all the forest used by Södra Skogsägarna and their members (approx. 3 million ha of forest land) in Götaland.

Marcus Liwicki, Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Applied AI at Luleå University of Technology, says:

– The collaboration with Dianthus is extremely interesting for us. The existing AI-based solution is already very advanced and they have good experience in Machine Learning. The company will benefit from the cutting-edge expertise of our group in deep learning with few data and the solution will become more flexible, accurate, and require less costly annotations. And we have already many ideas for great future projects!

An IT company with a focus on the forestry industry

Dianthus is an IT company that specializes in consulting in system development, geographic information systems and remote analysis with a focus on the forestry industry. The company is a subcontractor to Lantmäteriet, SCA and Sveaskog, among others. The collaboration that now takes place with Luleå University of Technology is within applied forest research and deep learning modeling.

The collaboration is part of the Applied AI Digital Innovation Hub North, a project financed by the EU Structural Funds, Luleå University of Technology, Region Norrbotten, Luleå Municipality and Skellefteå Municipality.