FOREST 4.0 Opening Event - Kick-off Meeting

The project’s FOREST 4.0 opening event – Kick-off meeting will take place on 10-11^th of May, 2023, Kaunas, Vytautas Magnus University. During this event the coordinator, partners and honorable guests will discuss the main goal – to establish a Centre of Excellence to transform the forest environment monitoring, data acquisition, and analysis, and capture value from the collected data. The welcome speech will be given by honored guests: Rector and Vice-Rectors of VMU, LNU and KTU, officials of the European Commission, the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport, Ministry of Environment of the Republic of Lithuania, representatives of the Kaunas City Municipality, the Vice Mayor of Växjö Municipality (Sweden) and many others.

FOREST 4.0 aims to contribute to the Lithuanian Smart Specialization Strategy by developing an innovative forest-based Lithuanian bio economy through the digitalization of forest operations. FOREST 4.0 will promote a science-based contribution of sustainable managed forests to the achievement of the EU Green Deal and the some of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), and the transition to a circular and sustainable bioeconomy through the provision of innovative data collection and processing applications.

The overall objective of the FOREST 4.0 project is to establish a Centre of Excellence to transform the forest environment monitoring, data acquisition, and analysis, and capture value from the collected data.

According to the project coordinator prof. Tomas Krilavičius ”The Center of Excellence in Smart Forestry will carry out the highest level of research, we propose to create a Centre of Excellence (CoE) in forest-related Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to develop and promote innovative data-based solutions to forestry management in the whole value chain, from forest resources management to end-products. The CoE will seek to mobilize and involve interested parties not only in Lithuania, but globally”.

Also during the opening event – kick-off meeting it is planned to discuss about the challenges for developing of the Centre of Excellence in Smart Forestry in Lithuania and why this sector needs attention from scientists.  The researchers and industry partners will have a good possibility to share good experiences in forestry management future perspectives, vision from different angles and identify the needs to cooperate with different stakeholders: industry, ministries, local and external stakeholders, etc.

After the opening event – kick-off meeting there will be organized project’s partners meeting. During this meeting the team will discuss the Advisory Board candidates, research strategy, present working plan for each WP, etc.

This project has received funding from the Horizon Europe Framework Programme (HORIZON), call Teaming for Excellence (HORIZON-WIDERA-2022-ACCESS-01-two-stage) under grant agreement No. 101059985 Creation of the centre of excellence in smart forestry “Forest 4.0”.