CoP ForestDSS News December 2015

22
Dec
12.22.2015 |
hvacik
Harald Vacik's picture

This is the December 2015 newsletter of the Community of Practice (CoP) on Forest Management Decision Support Systems:

Conferences and Call for papers

There are several conferences organized next year, which allow to strengthen collaboration and outreach by the DSS community. In some of the conferences the members of the CoP are actively engaged in organizing sessions and welcome submission of abstracts.

The ICDSST 2016 will be organized by the EURO Working Group on Decision Support Systems (EWG-DSS) in co-operation with University of Plymouth, UK, during the period of 23-25 May 2016. The conference will be hosted by the Plymouth Graduate School of Management & Plymouth Business School, Faculty of Business. The main purpose of the EWG-DSS 2016 International Conference on Decision Support System Technology (ICDSST 2016), with its main theme on “Decision Support Systems Addressing Societal Challenges”, is to attract researchers, developers and specialists in the related areas of decision making, including its methodologies and technologies, as well as application oriented practitioners directed to the implementation of solutions for societal challenges. More information on the call for papers can be found online: https://icdsst2016.wordpress.com/2015/04/01/icdsst-2016/ . Jose Borges, Jan Kašpar and Harald Vacik are organizing the session "'The use of DSS in forest resources management and policy analysis" as part of the ICDSST 2016 conference. The call for abstracts can be found online. We welcome abstracts from the CoP members - please send your proposal to Jan Kašpar (kasparj@fld.czu.cz).

The annual meeting of the Canadian Operational Research Society (CORS) brings together Operational Research academics from Canada and abroad. The next Annual CORS conference will take place from May 30 - June 1, 2016 in Canada's oldest national park, Banff. Within the conference, the Forestry Special Interest Group (FSIG) is organizing a cluster focused on OR applications in Forestry, and members of the CoP are invited to join the group.  The conference website and call for papers is available at: http://www.haskayne.ucalgary.ca/cors2016/ .

You are invited to take part in the 28th European Conference on Operational Research (EURO XXVIII) at Poznan University of Technology, Poznan, Poland.  The EURO 2016 Conference will  take place from July 3-6, 2016. The Program and Organizing Committees chaired by Daniele Vigo and Joanna Jzefowska, are preparing a high quality scientific program and an exciting social program for the Conference. The EURO XXVIII Conference will be an excellent opportunity for the OR community to get together again in a pleasant atmosphere.The conference website and call for papers is available at: http://www.euro2016.poznan.pl/)

Please consider submitting your environmental modeling and software work for presentation at the 8th International Congress on Environmental Modelling & Software (iEMSs 2016) Toulouse, FRANCE - 10-14 July 2016. The theme for the conference is "Supporting Sustainable Futures" and a lot of exciting new developments and tools for supporting our future are expected. To submit your abstract or paper now, please visit the conference web site: http://www.iemss.org/sites/iemss2016/

There are many more conferences scheduled for 2016 - you are able to track the latest call for papers and get to know about interesting conferences at the news and events page of the CoP.

New members

In the last months a number of new members joined the Community of Practice and we welcome them all: Marco Vieira Marto and Brigite Botequim from Forest Research Centre (CEF), School of Agriculture (ISA), University of Lisbon (Portugal), Broz Diego from the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (Argentina) and Kevin Vogler from the Oregon State University (United States), among many others. We are happy about their involvement in the CoP and warmly welcome the new members - Here are only some new members with their affiliation highlighted - for more details on all members please refer to the search page

New release of EMDS

The PNW Station (USDA Forest Service) and EMDS Consortium announces the release of the Ecosystem Management Decision Support system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem_Management_Decision_Support) version 5 on a platform-independent open-source GIS product. With this release, EMDS can now be run on Windows 7 and 8, Mac OS 10, and Linux operating systems. In addition, a streamed version of this latest version enables EMDS to run on iPads and Android tablets. Access to all MapWindows versions is available from Mountain View Business Group at http://emds.mountain-viewgroup.com/

Develop a mobile application to improve understanding of forests

In the context of the release of FAO’s Global Forest Resources Assessments 2015 (FRA), FAO is launching the "25 Years of forest change: Global Forest Resources Assessment 2015 app competition". Participants are invited to come up with mobile applications that can help better manage our forest resources and improve understanding of forests worldwide. The app should be based on the FRA 2015 dataset, now available for free download and use on the Forest Land Use Data Explorer (FLUDE), the online portal that allows data analysis of FRA and other FAO data sources. The FLUDE is online at: http://www.fao.org/forest-resources-assessment/explore-data/flude/en/. The appropriate use and combination of any other relevant and open data sources (i.e. FAOSTAT or other suitable datasets and information from international organizations, NGOs, etc) is welcome and encouraged. Target users include the scientific community, experts and/or policy-makers or the general public.

More information can be found here: http://www.fao.org/forest-resources-assessment/app-contest/en/

Other news

The list of publications is steadily growing and allows a good overview about forest DSS related papers. The most recent papers of members of the CoP are always highlighted on the main page of the CoP. You might have an interest to check the list of publications. Please check out the website for further announcements via the (news and events pages) or follow the latest discussions at the (community pages).