The annual ForestDSS Council meeting took place on the 18th of September 2018 as a side event of the IUFRO Congress Landscape Management: From Data to Decision in Prague, Czech Republic. Besides the DSS presentations during the IUFRO congress there were intensive discussions from a motivated group of DSS experts how to continue with the CoP in the future. The ForestDSS Council is constituted of those DSS experts that participate in the annual meeting of the CoP and they act as a review panel for the activity of the whole CoP. The agenda in Prague focused on the review of the activities during the last year 09/2017 - 09/2018, a discussion about the future activities of the CoP and the coordination.
A short presentation about the activities in the last year can be found in the report of the coordinator (see attached presentation).
Some selected future activies of the members of the CoP are:
screen the options for starting a YOUTube Channel on Forest Decision Support relevant topics and offering courses and introductory lectures
organize a session at the next IUFRO world congress jointly with other groups
resubmitting the COST proposal iLand focusing on Decision Support for Landscape Management
The coordinator Harald Vacik and vice-coordinator Ljusk-Ola Eriksson have proposed a new coordination of the CoP. The CoP Council has agreed upon the proposed candidate Jan Kaspar, who was elected as a new coordinator of the Community of Practice for Forest Management Decision Support Systems. The former coordinator Harald Vacik will act as a vice-coordinator and Ljusk-Ola Eriksson agreed to continuesly support the activities with his advices. We congratulate the new coordinator and wish him much success during the next years in steering the whole group.
The annual ForestDSS Council meeting took place on the 18th of September 2017as a side event of the 125thIUFRO Anniversary Congress in Freiburg, Germany . The ForestDSS Council was constituted of those DSS experts that participated in the annual meeting of the CoP and acted as a review panel for the activity of the whole CoP.
I short presentation about the activities in the last year and the proposed next activities for 2017/18 can be found in the report of the coordinator. Besides the DSS sessions during the IUFRO congress there were very intensive discussions from a motivated group of DSS experts how to continue with the CoP.
Some selected activies are:
- provide a stronger link to IUFRO groups (weblinks from portal to groups and from groups to portal; actively support the work in the CoP and increase visibility of researchers)
- update of the DSS descriptions in the wiki (identify important DSS that are currently missing and distribute tasks for the description of those)
- start to document DSS related lectures from the partners / universities in order to provide a hub for interested students that want to take a course
The core group of the ForestDSS CoP (ForestDSS Working Committee) has discussed during the last skype meeting the ongoing and future activities of the community. The purpose of the meeting was to update the community members about the ongoing collaborative activities, how the CoP network could support these actions and how the members can benefit from future activities. The minutes provide a short overview about the discussion points.
The SSAFR 2015 gathered 19-21 August in Uppsala, Sweden, about 100 researchers on Operations/Systems Analysis in forestry. About 30 of them attended the parallel session of ForestDSS CoP under the chairmanship of Jose Borges and Ljusk Ola Eriksson on August the 19th, 2015. The CoP has a physical meeting each year to assemble the ForestDSS Council. The Council is constituted of all those experts that participate in the annual meeting of the CoP. It is a temporary group which acts as a review panel for the activity of the whole CoP. It is an opportunity to critically evaluate the activities of the last year and discuss the working plans for the following year. A short report by the coordinator (Harald Vacik) was provided on the latest activities (see attached ppt) which summarized the activities related to the CoP. An overview of each workgroup was made concerning the status of the workplan and activities carried out.
A discussion about the interest to resubmit a proposal for funding of teaching and training activities related to forest management decision support was held.
Opportunties to collaborate with the Orchestra COST Action and the Value Chain Optimization (VCO) have been further elaborated. In this context the use of the Semantic Wiki is seen of high potential.
More details can be found in the attached minutes of the Council Meeting.
