Open Foris is a set of free and open-source software tools that facilitates flexible and efficient data collection, analysis and reporting on forest inventories. It allows for more robust reporting and decision-making related to land use and deforestation around the world.
The initiative was started under the Forestry Department of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in 2018 and has been integrated by dozens of countries in their efforts to make forestry data collection and analysis more efficient and flexible. Data obtained and processed with these tools is crucial for decision making related to climate change. Governments, research institutions and NGOs can use this toolset for a wide range of applications, including forest inventories, climate change reporting, socio-economic surveys, biodiversity assessment, land use, deforestation and desertification monitoring and others.
Open Foris tools support the entire inventory lifecycle: needs assessment, design, planning, data collection and management, estimation analysis and dissemination. Open Source allows the tools to meet the needs of their users as they are able to mix and match features and standards for the best outcome. Data gathered with Open Foris facilitates data portability and guarantees that the data is accessible in the future, independent of a particular IT-solutions supplier in the future and ensures interoperability with already existing local, national and international infrastructure.
The tools available for use include: Collect for data management and survey design, Collect Mobile for data collection and validation in the field, Collect Earth for land assessment through satellite imagery, Calc to analyse data and disseminate results, and a Geospatial Toolkit for processing of geospatial data. All tools are tested with a global network of partners and experts and freely available on GitHub under Open Source licenses. Open Foris organises training sessions around the world in order to ensure that end users are able to utilise the tools correctly and efficiently, as well as in order to promote sustainability and self-sufficiency of the tools.
Resource partners of this project include: Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN; Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland; Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (Germany); International Climate Initiative (IKI); Norwegian Space Centre; Servir and Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative. More information is available on the project's website and GitHub.