Geomaticians

Norway’s Answer To The Smart City Is A “Smart Forest”

Norway’s Answer To The Smart City Is A “Smart Forest”
Norwegian scientists are using mobile lidar to see how individual trees are connected with each other, to help innovate its forest sector and realize efficiency gains. Led by The Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIBIO), the SFI SmartForest aims to bring industry 4.0 to the sector over an 8-year period. Focusing on silviculture, forest operations, wood supply, and the overall digital information flow, SmartForest is investing in sensible enabling technologies such as handheld lidar sensors, to help achieve its goals. One such lidar solution is the GeoSLAM ZEB Horizon laser scanner, a handheld lidar scanner that can measure 300,000 points per second using 16 sensors with a relative accuracy up to 6 mm with a range of 100 meters. The points are used to produce dense 3D models of large areas, in a short period of time. Walking and scanning with the ZEB Horizon captures data from beneath the forest’s canopy. The accurate point cloud data includes the forest floor, debris, tree trunks, and thick vegetation. When needed, UAVs capture the heavy vegetation of the forest canopy, merging both datasets.