| Company | Arbonaut |
| Country | Finland |
| Website | https://arbonaut.com/services/forest-operations |
| Category | Planning & Inventory › Remote sensing & mapping |
Forest operations planning is the integrated process of scheduling, spatially allocating, and optimising the full range of silvicultural and harvesting activities within a managed forest estate — including road construction and maintenance, felling, extraction, regeneration, thinning, and transport logistics — to meet production, environmental, and safety objectives over defined planning horizons. Modern planning systems span strategic (10–100 year), tactical (1–10 year), and operational (daily to seasonal) timeframes, with each level informing the next through data hierarchies built on inventory, growth models, and terrain analysis. Spatial decision-support tools, commonly implemented within GIS platforms or dedicated harvest-planning software such as Remsoft Woodstock, Patchworks, or ATLAS, apply linear programming, heuristics, and simulation to generate harvesting sequences that balance timber yield, road costs, ecological constraints, and regulatory set-asides. Operational planning increasingly incorporates real-time machine telemetry and weather data to adjust schedules dynamically in response to ground conditions, equipment availability, and fire-risk windows.
In Australian plantation and native forest contexts, operations planning must navigate a complex overlay of environmental sensitivities including riparian buffers, threatened species habitat, slope-stability thresholds, and seasonal wet-weather exclusion zones. State-based prescriptions under the RFA framework define the minimum planning standards, while certifications such as FSC and PEFC impose additional chain-of-custody and planning-documentation requirements. The introduction of airborne LiDAR-derived digital terrain models (DTMs) has significantly improved road-alignment design and harvest-costing accuracy, allowing planners to model machine productivity and soil-disturbance risk before committing to field operations. Automation is advancing at the operational level through onboard machine-guidance systems that overlay harvest boundaries, stream buffers, and protected-tree markers on harvester cabin displays, reducing boundary violations and improving compliance without requiring manual staking. Research programs in Australia and New Zealand are also trialling autonomous route-optimisation for log-truck fleets, coordinating loading, hauling, and mill-delivery schedules to reduce empty running and fuel consumption across large plantation estates.
Improves planning precision and supports more efficient operations while lowering safety, environmental, and financial risks through better decision-making.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Company | Arbonaut |
| Country | Finland |
| Type | Company |
| Available in AU? | yes |
| Employees | MW Group is majority owner since 2022 |
| FWPA RD&E | 4.1 |