VANCOUVER – Globally, inventory mapping for foresters has benefited considerably from developments in drone and lidar technologies. Several international experts and foresters are coming together from countries with strong technical networks to a new forestry technology conference in early March 2018. The ForestTECHX 2018 conference will provide managers and technical staff from key forestry companies with a timely and independent overview of lidar, geomatics and data collection tools.

Conference organizer Anthony Robinson, of Logging & Sawmilling Journal, says, “We’ve been seeing a positive response from western forest companies to our line-up of speakers. Service provider interest has been running high as well, which allowed us to add two further technical experts to our one-day conference.”

The focus for this year’s event will be on unlocking the true value of data for forest operations. Key themes will include:

  • How virtual reality tools are delivering gains
  • How skill sets are changing for managers
  • How leading loggers are using harvester data
  • Learnings from reconciling remote sensing data in the field
  • Practical application of robotics and sensors by forest managers
  • Better ways to store, process and manage ‘big data’
  • New mobile forest apps
  • New GIS applications.

The 2018 ForestTECHX conference runs March 6-7 at the Executive Airport Plaza Hotel in Richmond, B.C. Registrations are now open on www.foresttechx.events with the early bird rates available until December 20, 2017.