Objectives of the service
Image credit: CybELE Lawgical Lda
POREWIT solves problems related to the lack of efficiency of environmental compliance and risk assessment monitoring methods in the forestry sector. The service provides four specific types of benefit for stakeholders involved in the forestry sector.
- Early detection - Be aware of anomalies and suspicious activities to reduce the risk of incidents and associated liabilities
- Compliant infrastructures – The SatEO products provided by the service enables to prove the compliance with forestry law and limit the risk related to legal liability.
- Smart Decision – The data & analytics accessible through the service empower stakeholders of the forest sector with sustainable decision-making capacity and provide study to their partners (governmental, local communities, insurance, investors…).
- Resource optimization - Optimize the day-to-day efficiency of operational planning and management to support monitoring compliance in your whole supply chain to reduce financial/HR resources.
Users and their needs
The POREWIT service answers the needs of any law enforcement agent or legal officer seeking to assess the compliance of industrial or human activities with the respect of forestry regulation and standards. It is used at first in the public sector by Law Enforcement Agencies and prosecution offices and courts of Law to investigate and condemn illegal activities related to forest. Furthermore, it offers support for all the actors involved in the forestry supply chain (such as industrial companies with activities impacting the forest, auditing or legal firms) to monitor and prove the compliance of their activities. Ultimately, governmental, NGOs and local communities can use POREWIT as a tool to implement analysis of forest status and produce reports accordingly.
The common needs of the community using the service include :
- to assess if supply chains are compliant with environmental and forestry laws and notably of the due diligence obligations, labels and certification.
- to investigate and prosecute illegal behaviour related to national and international forestry law.
The service answers the main difficulties such as :
- to difficulty to access on accurate and updated data for remote geographical areas
- the lack of understanding in the use of SatEO technologies
Service/ system concept
POREWIT gathers and process different type of satellite data, combine them with non satellite data to supply different types of information and analytics including :
- Surface of forest and non forest
- Database of satellite images
- Tools to assess the evolution of the forest
- Statistics on the Forest
The service is provided through a user friendly web based interface to allow users to select their area and timeline and access simply to their database of satellite images and analytics.
Pursuing the prototype and demonstration phases, POREWIT aims to integrate additional satellite data (such as above-ground biomass information), cover additional geographical areas and
Image credit: CybELE Lawgical Lda
Space Added Value
POREWIT relies on a unique processing of SAR (such as Sentinel-1) optical (such as Sentinel-2) satellite imagery to provide highly accurate representation of forest and non forest surface of forest mapping. The combination of both technologies allow to overcome issues related to cloud cover (notably in tropical regions) and to increase the scope of the service both spatially and temporally regarding existing solutions. The satellite data is also combined with additional Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data to answer the specific requests made by end users in terms of forestry compliance monitoring services.
Current Status
Image credit: CybELE Lawgical Lda
The POREWIT study is concluded. After analysing the structure of law compliance activities in the forestry sector, the team contacted over 15 professionals involved at different levels of the targeted value chain (forest companies, forest auditors, civil society and law enforcement). The discussion conducted enabled the team to define and validate the service requirements for a prototype. The establishment of a strategic partnership with an end user seeking to monitor the compliance of national forest policy and REDD+ programs enabled to have ongoing feedback on the development and finalise the first version of the prototype. Next phase of development aims to pass the POREWIT service from a prototype to a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) accessible to a large part of the forestry community.
Prime Contractor(s)
