Triona modernizes Forest Information System for Metsähallitus together with Arbonaut

Triona and Arbonaut were selected to create the new Forest Information System for Metsähallitus Metsätalous Oy. Up-to-date, comprehensive, and high-quality forest resource information is valuable for Metsähallitus’ operations and decision-making. Careful forest planning is the core of responsible forestry.

To support forest resource data management and forest planning functions, a suitable, reliable, usable, and efficient application is needed for both office and offline use in the field. The new solution will replace the existing system by the end of the year 2025.

Metsähallitus’ current forest information system (Silvia) has been in production use since 2015. It is the most crucial tool for managing the forest resources and nature information of Metsähallitus’ multi-use forests, as well as for the planning of timber harvesting, forest management, nature management, and drainage.

The main goal of the forest information system reform is modern and cost-effective management of forest resources and nature data, as well as the reliable and smooth functional support of the action planning process. The future forest information system must above all be easy-to-use, stable, and high performing. The implementation will be done in sufficiently small modules/applications so that smooth maintenance of the system with as short interruptions as possible is possible. The system must be scalable, secure, and efficient.

"We expect the new system to support decision-making in such a way that the alternative measures and goals are clearly visible to the planner. The fact that the information of the execution of tasks come directly to the system directly improves monitoring and planning quality. Knowledge-based management is a thing of today," says Hannu Lehtonen, director of forest management and planning from Metsähallitus.

Field work will continue to be a big part of planning in the future. The solution’s offline ability to work in a state without a network connection is a mandatory requirement because the slowness of the network connection or its occasional absence must not hinder the planning in the terrain. Data needs to be synchronized with the backend system when a network connection is available. Special attention is paid to usability in these challenging conditions.

The solution will be developed according to Metsähallitus’ new agile development methodology (MH Ketterä Pelikirja), and it is technologically based on modern open source and Azure cloud solutions.

We are naturally incredibly happy to be able to build Metsähallitus’ new forest information system. At the same time, we can deepen our cooperation with Arbonaut. The forestry industry is one of our most important industries both in Finland and in our whole group, so cooperation with Metsähallitus is an excellent fit for our operations and goals, and we also get to build an exchange of information between Nordic public forestry operators. Together we will surely reach the desired outcome.