Efficiency Assessment of Fully Mechanized Harvesting System through the Use of Fleet Management System

Abstract

Nowadays the spread of precision forestry has led to the possibility of collecting data related to forest machines for an extended period and with enough precision to support decisions in the optimization of harvesting strategies in terms of technological and environmental efficiency. This study aims to evaluate the effective benefit of automatic data collection through the fleet management system (FMS) of two forest harvesters and two forwarders in pine forests in Poland. The study also aims to determine how the use of FMS can help forest companies to manage their fleet and take advantage of long-term monitoring. Focusing on performance indicators of fuel consumption and CO2 emissions, as well as on the engine parameters from the Can Bus data, the exploration of data was performed following a Big Data approach, from the creation of an aggregate dataset, pre-elaboration (data cleaning, exploration, selection, etc.) using GIS and R software. The investigation has considered the machine productivity, in the case of the harvesters, and the specific fuel consumption of each machine studied, as well as the time used by each of them during the different working cycle activities and the total amount of timber processed. The main results indicate an average emission of 2.1 kg of CO2 eq/m3 for the harvesters and 2.56 kg of CO2 eq/m3 for the forwarders, which equates in total to 0.24% of the carbon stored in one cubic meter of wood.

Recent Applications of Smart Technologies for Monitoring the Sustainability of Forest Operations

“…Valid instruments for forest management to ensure the traceability of forest products [49,50] as well as validate theoretical models regarding forest harvesting systems and efficiency [51] are made possible by the increasing performance of data acquisition, processing, and transmission brought on by new technological advancements (Industry/Forestry 4.0) and the application of the principle of Precision Forestry (PF) [52,53]. With the use of this technology, decision-makers can characterise wood resources in detail, including their geographical characteristics and stand factors.…”

Assessing the Extent and Severity of the Impact on Forest Soils of Two Different Fully Mechanized Timber Harvesting Operations

“…Timber is felled and extracted using various technologies with different levels of mechanization, including fully mechanized, semi-mechanized, and motor-manual methods [1,2]. Even though mechanized harvesting technologies can provide clear benefits by improving productivity and safety, ground-based machine traffic can inherently impact forest ecosystems, particularly forest soils [3][4][5] in the form of compaction, rutting, and displacement [6,7].…”

Evaluating an Innovative ICT System for Monitoring Small-Scale Forest Operations: Preliminary Tests in Mediterranean Oak Coppices

“…Additionally, data, including the fuel consumption, productivity, and position, can be seen remotely through the manufacturer's portal. The Controller Area Network (CAN-bus) system, which is implemented in nearly all modern forest harvesters and processors, makes all these applications realisable by transmitting the machine status and the parameters to the on-board computer (OBC) via the Standard for Forest Machine Data and Communication (StanForD) [35,36].…”