Operational monitoring of forest logging activities: an application of Precision Forestry approach for monitoring cable cranes logging operations

An important aspect to Precision Forestry (PFOR) is implementing operational monitoring of forest chain logistics. PFOR can be considered as the application of information technology (IT) to the forest sector. Its introduction has the aim to improve the efficiency and the performances of the forest sector, including all the related monitoring activities to satisfy management tasks. So PFOR has become, similarly to Precision Agriculture, a general reference scheme into which fundamental decision support systems can be framed and used (Lubello et al. 2006). The possibility of automating operational monitoring tasks plays an important role in this framework and this paper describes the inference engine procedure (IEP) that was developed to this aim. An IEP is a tool able to transform through a set of logical, statistic and physical algorithms raw data into intelligible management information, such as messages that can be used to take decisions or to perform controlling tasks (Mazzetto et al. 2012). An evaluation comparison of the application results for cable yarding systems will be achieved in two different countries (Italy and New Zealand) and presented in this paper.