The Conference FORSYS 2013 Decision Support Systems for Sustainable Forest Management in Umeå, Sweden provided a worldwide quality reference for development and application of advanced computerized tools to support forest management and policy analysis. Its program encompassed 48 presentations and it involved 98 participants from 32 countries - an original synthesis of multidisciplinary research efforts – developed under the COST Action FP0804 (FORSYS Forest Management DSS).
The organizers of the stream Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (area: OR in Natural Resources) for the 27th European Conference on Operational Research, which will be held in Glasgow, UK, July 13-15, 2015, invite you to submit an abstract of your research in the broad area of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.
Your research in the field of decision support systems might fit to one of the following sessions:
Sustainable Forest Management and Ecosystems Services (code 66f16dc5)
The SSAFR 2015 symposia (16th Symposium for Systems Analysis in Forest Resources) will take place from August 19-21, 2015 in Uppsala, Sweden.It will congregate researchers and practitioners in the area of Operations Research and Systems Analysis in Forest Resources. The symposia are held biannually and have until now taken place in the Americas, mostly in USA. This would be the first time the symposium takes place in Europe. Let it be an opportunity to further strengthen the community worldwide.
The conference "Mountain Forest Management in a Changing World" will provide the opportunity to present and discuss the potentials and limitations of current and possible future approaches to mountain forest management for providing portfolios of ecosystem services under current and future climatic and socio-economic conditions.
Share your experiences, cutting-edge research, development projects, practical applications and theoretical models at the world forest congress in 2015!
The organizers are inviting abstracts on the central theme of the XIV World Forestry Congress, “Forests and People: Investing in a Sustainable Future”, and on relevant topics that also align with any of the six Congress sub-themes:
This is the third newsletter of the Community of Practice (CoP) on Forest Management Decision Support Systems. We would like to update you on the recent developments in the CoP:
Council Meeting at the IUFRO Conference
During the IUFRO Congress in Salt Lake City a session explored how Decision Support Systems (DSS) are currently designed and applied for a sustained provision of ecosystem services under climate change, ranging from examples in the US and Europe. The presenters provided an overview about the different models, methods and techniques applied to support decision making under changing environmental conditions and the challenges they have to tackle in tailoring the DSS to the needs of the decision makers. Conclusions on the presentations and the presentations itself can be downloaded from the: website
Council Meeting at IFORS Conference
Members of the Working Committee of the Community of Practice gathered during a side event of the 20th Conference of the International Federation of Operational Research Societies (IFORS 2014) held from 13-18 July 2014 in the city of Barcelona. A lot of interesting presentations were given and some of them have been made available for download at the website:
Forestdss.org website and new members
In the last months a number of new members joined the Community of Practice from around the globe:
Annelies De Meyer from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at KU Leuven (Belgium), Michal Petr from the Northern Research Station at Forest Research (UK), Clemens Blattert from the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL (Switzerland), Robert Marusak from the Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague and Pavel Cudlín from the Global Change Research Centre (Czech Republic), Larisa Khanina, Head of Laboratory of Computational Ecology at the Institute of Mathematical Problems in Biology of RAS (Russia) and Ragnar K.H. Jonsson from the Joint Research Centre (JRC), Verena Griess from the University of British Columbia (Canada) and Jose Javier Corral Rivas from the Universidad Juarez del Estado de Durango (Mexico) among others. We are happy about their involvement in the CoP and warmly welcome the new members - for more details on the members please refer to the search page
New publications
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 them out – for instance the paper published by
Gordon et al. (2014) in the special issue of the Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research more info
or the book on the FORSYS Country reports by
Borges et al. (eds.) (2014) Computer-based tools for supporting forest management. The experience and the expertise world-wide. more info
Upcoming conferences and meetings
There are several meetings scheduled for next year, which would allow the members of the CoP to meet physically in a council meeting as a side event of the planned conferences. Two options are listed below, where members of the CoP are warmly welcomed to participate:
The EURO 2015 as the premier European conference for Operational Research and Management Science (ORMS), organised by the European Association of Operational Research Societies in conjunction with the UK OR Society will be held from 12-15 of July in the University of Strathclyde more info
The Symposium for Systems Analysis in Forest Resources (SSAFR 2015) which will be held from August 19 to August 21, 2015 in Uppsala, Sweden. more info
We looking forward to meet all of you in one or the other event!
During the IUFRO Congress in Salt Lake City a session explored how Decision Support Systems (DSS) are currently designed and applied for a sustained provision of ecosystem services under climate change, ranging from examples in the US and Europe, focusing on different contexts. The presenters provided an overview about the different models, methods and techniques applied to support decision making under changing environmental conditions and the challenges they have to tackle in tailoring the DSS to the needs of the decision makers. The following conclusions were drawn in the discussion:
- there is a strong need for DSS to consider growth models and ecosystem models that are capable in addressing changing environmental conditions, include biotic and abiotic disturbance agents and allow an evaluation for multiple ecosystem services
- DSS should provide frameworks that allow considering uncertainties in decision making and provide possibilities for risk evaluation
- There is a strong need to include decision makers and DSS users in the design of the DSS from the very beginning in order to meet their demands
- DSS allow to increase transparency of decision making processes, support formal evaluation of decision alternatives and allow to include various stakeholders and actors in decision making
- There is a dilemma in addressing all aspects of the complex decision making contexts in forest management but still trying to design simple applications according to the user demands
- The members of the Community of Practice on Forest Decision Support Systems (www.forestdss.org) should continue to share their expertise in applying models, methods, techniques and frameworks for developing and applying DSSs to provide lessons learned
The oral and poster presentations given in the session, can be found as an attachment here:
Oral Presentations:
Harald Vacik & Sean Gordon: Community Of Practice Of Forest Management Decision Support Systems And Lessons Learned For DSS Development And Application
Keith Reynolds: Design Features Behind The Success Of The Ecosystem Management Decision Support System
Antti Mäkinen: Long-Term Forest Planning Under Risk And Uncertainty; Can Robust Linear Programming Help?
Poster Presentations:
Robert Marusak: DSS Optimal - A Case Study Form The Czech Republic
Jan Kaspar: Spatial Aspects Of Biodiversity As A Part Of Harvest Scheduling Decision Process
Aleš Poljanec : Balancing Biomass And Biodiversity In Protected Areas, The Triglav National Park Case Study
Susana Barreiro: Evaluating Future Wood Availability In Europe. Methods And Tools
Francisco Dominguez Hernandez: The System Of Silviculture For Conservation And Development (SICODESI), Lessons From A Successful Case Of Forest Management In Jalisco, México
It is intended to produce a special issue for the Journal Forests of all presentations given during the session and some invited additional contributions that are coming from the field of DSS. The papers will be published under open access and will be peer reviewed. For further information please refer to
