Complementary software solutions for efficient timber logging and trade management

Abstract

Timber logging and trade is a complex system with important environmental, but also economic and societal dimensions. Today, the timber market has become global, not only for high-valued timber products, but also for technical and fire wood. At the same time, illegal logging is a common hurdle in almost all stages of the timber lifecycle from forest to market, creating a positive feedback cycle that starts with local environmental degradation and leads to severe impacts on global climate change. Timber certification and traceability are key aspects that may ensure supply-chain transparency, illegal logging mitigation, and forest management sustainability. Information systems have a central role to play in an application domain that is hardly digitized, such as forestry. Providing innovative technological solutions to support the daily work of the local forest service is critical, but the integration of ICT technologies in their operations is indeed a challenging endeavour. In this paper, a set of complementary software solutions is presented that aim to assist timber logging, transportation and trade management, and consequently to support efficient wood certification. The paper also outlines how forest service staff perceptions were integrated at an early stage in the design and development phase in order to increase system usability and maximise the potential for technology assimilation.