Freising, 12–13 March. Researchers from the TreeDigitalTwins project presented their latest project results at the international “SmartForest” conference, underscoring the university’s position as a driving force for digital solutions in the forestry sector. The SmartForest conference brings together scientists, industry representatives, and policymakers to present and discuss state-of-the-art technologies for the future of forestry.

The BMFRT-funded “TreeDigitalTwins” project, is grounded in a collaboration between HNEE and the University of Potsdam, the Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Engineering and Bioeconomy, as well as the private company Point Cloud Technology. As part of the project, a practice network with real-world laboratories was established in the Berlin–Brandenburg region on the topic “4D point clouds and AI-based methods for building digital twins of vegetation stands for use in integrative forest management.”

One particularly notable finding of the project is that in certain forest scenarios—especially in species- and structure-poor stands—non-AI methods can achieve results that are just as good, and in some cases even better, than AI-based approaches, while requiring significantly less computational effort. These insights make a substantial contribution to better assessing the suitability of digital methods for different application scenarios in forestry practice.

The project members are also presenting a substantive meta-analysis of benchmark datasets and are advocating for a cross-border initiative to develop a scenario-based standard benchmark. This would allow methods to be compared more precisely and robustly in future and to close existing data gaps in a targeted manner.

SmartForest is one of several national and international conferences at which talks from the TreeDigitalTwins project are being delivered this year. The results were presented again just a few days later at a status conference organised for all projects funded under the REGULUS funding measure (“Regional Innovation Groups for Climate-Protecting Forest and Timber Management”), within the BMFTR’s “Research for Sustainability” strategy. Key upcoming appearances for the project include ForestSAT2026 in Florida, USA, and the 45th EARSeL Symposium in Athens, Greece.

Contact: Prof Dr Jan-Peter Mund, Mr Stefan Reder Koithahn , or Dr Kevin Beiler