Under the slogan of exchanging experiences on how the use of Artificial Intelligence can contribute to the sustainable and responsible management of forestry operations, government officials and the company Timbeter, from Estonia, met last March to analyze the use of environmental technologies.
Technicians from the Costa Rican Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE), the National System of Conservation Areas (SINAC), and the National Forest Office (ONF) participated in the activity, which lasted during the third week of the previous month in the company of experts in charge of bringing this technology of Estonian origin to the country.
The work sessions took place in one of the company’s operations sites, Bosques Selectos LWO SA, located in the community of San Jorge, Los Chiles, Alajuela, from where the local and international market is supplied with species such as melina and teak, among others.
Within the framework of the “Implementation of Timbeter’s wood measurement technology for efficient forest management in Costa Rica”, representatives of the European firm explained to the participants how they use the technology for:
– The measurement of logs in the field, trucks, sawmill and containers.
– Use of digital data to keep track of wood volumes in the production chain, reports and inventory.
– Documentation with images for the custody of the wood.
– Prevention of occupational accidents and efficiency in operations.
Digital solutions that monitor the forestry sector
Precisely, the project seeks to integrate Timbeter technology with the digital solutions that Costa Rica has developed, in order to monitor the forestry sector, facilitate the sustainable management of forests and combat illegal logging in the country, while strengthening and giving support for the digitalization of forest management and increase the competitiveness of the sector.
“During the activity we were able to observe great enthusiasm in the use of technology on the part of the participants and how it can directly help their work,” said Rafael Monge, director of the National Center for Geoenvironmental Information (CENIGA) of MINAE.
For his part, Sebastián Ugalde, manager of Forestry, Industry and Commerce at ONF and facilitator of practical activities, said that with this and other activities that are being planned, the Costa Rican forestry sector is expected to take advantage of the use of new technologies.
Bring benefits for efficient and sustainable management
“Technological applications bring benefits to efficient and sustainable management in the sector, offering more transparency to both buyers and producers, and to the rest of the actors in the wood supply chain,” he said.
The initiative is promoted thanks to the alliance between the governments of Costa Rica and Estonia, which also seeks to transfer knowledge on issues of digitization and implementation of digital government solutions.
Representatives of academic institutions, forestry organizations, companies and independent forestry professionals participated in the activity, who had the opportunity to carry out guided practices with different functionalities of the technology, including measurement with the Tica Wood Inch formula, Metric Hoppus, among others.
