Innovation for Change, ICF’s National Conference 2018, will look at a range of new drivers for tomorrow’s forestry and arboriculture sector. Among them, naturally, is what tools are being developed to help tree professionals in their work.
Ian Thomas MICFor has been piloting a new Forestry visualisation tool called “Prospect” that was developed by Mapmaker in partnership with the Forestry Commission. Ian reports on the software.
The software was developed to as a forest planning tool for Forest Enterprise Scotland, but has now been rolled out commercially and is available to the private sector. The software is ideal for both working up projects to take full account of the landscape impacts and also presentation of the final design. The interactive functionality could also be used during live scoping exercises to explore options and evaluate stakeholder concerns.
The Software is designed specifically for the UK forestry sector and via the interactive map layer enables forest managers and planners to adapt designs and instantly see the impacts of changes. Outputs for presentation can include high resolution images and photomontages.
Although designed originally for the forest planning of existing forests, the software is ideally suited to the design of new woodland, and could be a very positive way of presenting proposals to stakeholders and hopefully allaying fears about the landscape implications of woodland creation.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Institute of Chartered Foresters.
