From WIS.2 to Smart Forest – a sustainable forest management decision support system

WIS.2 is a DSS for monitoring and implementing the goal-oriented and sustainable management of forest ecosystems, especially with regard to the integral management of significant spatial and temporal scales in forest ecosystems. WIS.2 considers multiple ecosystem goods and services in silvicultural management and the implementation of silvicultural interventions, which are in accordance with the Swiss silvicultural tradition. WIS.2 takes a top-down approach, starting with the entrepreneurial strategy, and ending at short and mid-term interventions at stand level. WIS.2 structures the overall decision process across multiple scales and provides decision support for each decision to be taken by organizing and connecting available data and models.
WIS.2 is based on MS Access and ArcGIS View and is composed of different applications, each handling a main aspect of the management of forest ecosystems. The tool is used at the level of higher education in forest management in Switzerland. WIS.2, initially developed during 2001-2005 within the framework of a PhD thesis at the ETH in Zurich (Rosset 2005a), has been successively improved through practical use in more than 10 case studies in five Swiss Cantons. The main challenge is now to advance from a prototype to an easily available consolidated IT product.