UBC Faculty of Forestry, in partnership with FPInnovations and spatial analytics platform provider LlamaZOO, has been awarded $300,000 in funding to further develop and commercialize TimberOps, an immersive visual analytics platform for forest operations and land management.
TimberOps is designed to address the many challenges encountered by managing forest resources over vast areas. The digital landscape, integrates different datasets that can be reviewed through intuitive, analytical tools that factor in all aspects of forest management planning, ranging from consultation and road surveying to cutblock planning.
“Working and teaching in virtual reality has the potential to revolutionize the way we work in forestry in the future,” says UBC Forestry’s forest and wildfire operations associate professor Dr Dominik Roeser. “The Ignite grant could not have come at a better time as we are forced to move teaching from the field into an online environment due to COVID-19.”
The funding granted under Innovate BC’s Ignite Program will be used to create the UBC Forest Engagement Initiative, a training and demonstration facility for UBC forestry students and members of industry who will have the opportunity to engage in data-driven conversations about landscape-level forest resources management. Led by Dr Roeser, the facility will also serve as an industry pathway to demonstrate the technology and digital innovation to pilot patrons of TimberOps.
Learn more about how virtual reality can aid land-based resource management and operations planning.
