Currently, in Canada, wildfires are managed using an approach known as ‘initial attack’, in which fires are detected early and fought quickly and aggressively with the objective of full suppression. Though ‘initial attack’ is effective, firefighting crews can easily be overwhelmed if there is a large number of new fires. If crews cannot keep up, some of the fires escape …

To capitalise on those travelling through to Rotorua to attend the New Zealand leg of the ForestTECH 2019 series this year, two workshops have been set up for ForestTECH 2019 delegates by the specialist systems integration and information management company, Eagle Technology. The first will run at the conference venue, the Distinction Hotel, the day before the two-day conference, on …

If a trillion trees are planted on all of the land on the planet that’s available for reforestation, scientists have calculated that it could capture two-thirds of the carbon that humans have emitted since the industrial revolution. A new start-up has launched with the wildly ambitious goal to plant those trees—and it plans to plant the majority using drones. The …

Putting the world’s eyes in the skies to work to improve human lives and combat climate change is now easier thanks to an overhaul of the Food and Agriculture Organization’ innovative geospatial monitoring system. A new version of SEPAL – System for Earth Observation Data Access, Processing and Analysis for Land Monitoring – has been developed that enables advanced forest …

The finalists in the sixth New Zealand Spatial Excellence Awards (NZSEA) were announced in early September. The 2019 Awards received 34 entries from a diverse range of organisations and individuals from around New Zealand. Each entry highlights the different ways spatial technology is being used by business and iwi in areas including road safety, sustainable farming, workplace safety, earthquake recovery, …

Trimble (TRMB) announced, on 4 September 2019, that it has acquired 3LOG Systems, Inc., a leading supplier of timber management software solutions. The acquisition complements Trimble’s forestry business software portfolio and further expands the Trimble Connected Forest™ solutions, which offer a complete end-to-end ecosystem for forest management, traceability and timber processing. Financial terms were not disclosed. Headquartered in Vancouver British Columbia, 3LOG has …

We have highlighted Airobotics a number of times here on ForestTECH. Airobotics is a world-leading UAV company producing autonomous drones for industry application. They made history earlier this year when they obtained Australia’s first Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) approval to operate automated multi-rotor drones from its Remote Operations Center (ROC) beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS). Airobotics has also …

Tokyo-headquartered Terra Drone Corporation, the world’s largest industrial drone services provider, has finalized its expansion into the Australian market after completing an equity investment in Australian firm, C4D Intel Pty Ltd. As part of the deal, C4D Intel will immediately rebrand to Terra Drone Australia. The move by Terra Drone is the latest of the company’s investments into leading drone …

Once a promising, futuristic tech at the start of the 2010s, drones are now the centre of a troubled, overcrowded sector. New commercial drone businesses flooded into the market at the start of the decade, flush with venture capital and giddy with visions of unmanned aircraft being used for everything from delivering packages, fertilising farmland or scanning forests. Some of …