Rolf Schmitz's guest appearances

Rolf Schmitz

YourForest

The Digital Forester

The Age of AI Podcast

OwlTail

Christof Danzl

The old ways are changing. Technology moves fast, and with it our methods and strategies for managing the landscape. Artificial Intelligence, or machine learning, presents an incredible opportunity in forest management. Better and faster data means more time spent on other values. Values like biodiversity, clean water, carbon storage and recreation. Today we find out how far we have come and what lies ahead! Hopefully not Skynet…ResourcesCollective CrunchSponsorsWest FraserGreenLink Forestry Inc.TakeawaysForest inventories (13.22)Christof notes that forest inventories came into being after the overuse of forest resources in the industrial revolution and the realization that those resources are not unlimited. Country-wide inventories began only 100 years ago, and he claims Nordic and central European countries were the forerunners in this matter. Forestry is an area where AI actually works (19.07)Christof points out that LIDAR is done in 5-10 year cycles since acquiring data is expensive. They enrich data using their software to fill the gaps, making it cheaper. Rolf shares an example of how data can help track biodiversity loss to keep corporates accountable for their processes and offer transparency of ethics to consumers. Data-driven baselining (27.52)Rolf discusses one of their services, data-driven baselining for project management and bringing data into greenwashing conversations. Christof highlights that AI helps with squeezing the most out of the available data in a project. Rolf recognizes the benefits of this for a large landmass managed by a single entity. The data you need (34.08)Christof lists the various tools to acquire data at various levels of granularity and mentions that their customer segment usually looks for the medium scale of data. He talks about how modern AI systems are based on extracting and learning from existing data, the relationships between the data and what you want to predict. Limits (39.24)Rolf finds that the kind of data available can be limiting while Christof says ground measurements can be a limiting factor. Where LIDAR exists, technology can be used to augment the data between flights.Valid and reliable (51.19)Rolf talks about how data can provide a verifiable and scientific way to manage forests, and they are trying to convince the industry to become data-driven for scale. Their company can provide baseline analysis to help investors who are looking to invest in carbon credits. The North American story (1.00.01)Rolf foresees the carbon price continuing to go up in North America, which may incentivize forest owners to leave forests unharvested. Christof has observed change management initiatives in government forest organizations to embrace the new ways of managing forests.  The data-driven future (1.10.08)Christof believes more and higher quality data is a matter of time. They are seeing exponential growth in data, and his dream is to have a digital equivalent of the world’s forest cover, which would expand the possibilities of forest planning and management for the most economically optimal operations. Rolf adds that higher-resolution data is needed for biodiversity initiatives, but that we are on our way there. 

The old ways are changing. Technology moves fast, and with it our methods and strategies for managing the landscape. Artificial Intelligence, or machine learning, presents an incredible opportunity in forest management. Better and faster data means more time spent on other values. Values like biodiversity, clean water, carbon storage and recreation. Today we find out how far we have come and what lies ahead! Hopefully not Skynet…Resources<a href="https://www.collectivecrunch.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Collective Crunch</a>Sponsors<a href="https://www.westfraser.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">West Fraser</a><a href="http://greenlinkforestry.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">GreenLink Forestry Inc.</a>TakeawaysForest inventories (13.22)Christof notes that forest inventories came into being after the overuse of forest resources in the industrial revolution and the realization that those resources are not unlimited. Country-wide inventories began only 100 years ago, and he claims Nordic and central European countries were the forerunners in this matter. Forestry is an area where AI actually works (19.07)Christof points out that LIDAR is done in 5-10 year cycles since acquiring data is expensive. They enrich data using their software to fill the gaps, making it cheaper. Rolf shares an example of how data can help track biodiversity loss to keep corporates accountable for their processes and offer transparency of ethics to consumers. Data-driven baselining (27.52)Rolf discusses one of their services, data-driven baselining for project management and bringing data into greenwashing conversations. Christof highlights that AI helps with squeezing the most out of the available data in a project. Rolf recognizes the benefits of this for a large landmass managed by a single entity. The data you need (34.08)Christof lists the various tools to acquire data at various levels of granularity and mentions that their customer segment usually looks for the medium scale of data. He talks about how modern AI systems are based on extracting and learning from existing data, the relationships between the data and what you want to predict. Limits (39.24)Rolf finds that the kind of data available can be limiting while Christof says ground measurements can be a limiting factor. Where LIDAR exists, technology can be used to augment the data between flights.Valid and reliable (51.19)Rolf talks about how data can provide a verifiable and scientific way to manage forests, and they are trying to convince the industry to become data-driven for scale. Their company can provide baseline analysis to help investors who are looking to invest in carbon credits. The North American story (1.00.01)Rolf foresees the carbon price continuing to go up in North America, which may incentivize forest owners to leave forests unharvested. Christof has observed change management initiatives in government forest organizations to embrace the new ways of managing forests.  The data-driven future (1.10.08)Christof believes more and higher quality data is a matter of time. They are seeing exponential growth in data, and his dream is to have a digital equivalent of the world’s forest cover, which would expand the possibilities of forest planning and management for the most economically optimal operations. Rolf adds that higher-resolution data is needed for biodiversity initiatives, but that we are on our way there.

131-Artificial Intelligence In Forestry with Rolf Schmitz and Christof Danzl

Rolf  Schmitz is the co-CEO and co-founder of CollectiveCrunch and while normally based out of Germany, joins us from Espoo, Finland. In his words, modelling nature is incredibly complex but also fun and beautiful. CollectiveCrunch originated from the idea that it could make a difference by combining climate and geo data with state-of-the-art analytics to develop new insights. In this conversation, Rolf talks about how cut-to-length harvester data can be used to calibrate models, the importance to focus on outcomes and not the black box nature of AI, the potential of blockchain for tokenizing carbon and much more. If you want to know who is the Linda in CollectiveCrunch’s Linda Forest, Linda Scout and Linda Planet solutions, come have a listen.

Rolf Schmitz is the co-CEO and co-founder of CollectiveCrunch and while normally based out of Germany, joins us from Espoo, Finland. In his words, modelling nature is incredibly complex but also fun and beautiful. CollectiveCrunch originated from the idea that it could make a difference by combining climate and geo data with state-of-the-art analytics to develop new insights. In this conversation, Rolf talks about how cut-to-length harvester data can be used to calibrate models, the importance to focus on outcomes and not the black box nature of AI, the potential of blockchain for tokenizing carbon and much more. If you want to know who is the Linda in CollectiveCrunch’s Linda Forest, Linda Scout and Linda Planet solutions, come have a listen.

Rolf Schmitz - CollectiveCrunch

Forestry has a long-standing perception of being a pretty low-tech,  primitive industry — after all, they just “chop trees and sell the  wood.” While the business at the core is exactly as simple as that, a big fat element of detail we often forget is that when you have to manage millions of hectares of wild forest land as a company, the challenge is anything but simple! This episode is about how AI is changing forest inventories and carbon monitoring. My guest is Rolf Schmitz, CEO of Collective Crunch: a company that provides data analytics solutions to forestry companies. They have spent the last 5 years building an extensive suite of ML products and have customers all over the Nordics. This is The Age of AI Series, where we talk to the foremost entrepreneurs and innovators around the planet using AI to transform their industries. Rolf and I get into the weeds (pun intended) of forestry and carbon economics, and give you the full picture:  01:45 — What’s going on in the forestry industry, and the concept of “forest inventory” 05:57 — How forest yields and inventory are measured 09:32 — Conventional methods of taking inventory of a forest, their error rates, pros and cons 13:47 — How new data can improve the error rates of conventional methods 16:13 — Brief history of LiDAR and machine learning methods in forestry — and the key factors affecting adoption rates 22:12 — Why building tech products for an un-sexy industry like forestry has suddenly started gathering more attention recently 24:54 — What makes one forest more “sustainable” than another, and why businesses are finally paying more attention 31:05 — What Collective Crunch provides to their customers and how it works 35:55 — The evolution of Collective Crunch; why  they chose their current business model (big strategic decisions and  reasoning for them) 40:34 — The key technical challenges in building Collective Crunch, explained simply  Here's the blog post for this episode: https://sanpram.com/2021/10/03/ai-for-forestry-collective-crunch/ This podcast is produced by Sanpram Transnational Corp., an education and media company helping non-technical professionals be tech-fluent. See our programs: https://sanpram.com/teaching/

Forestry has a long-standing perception of being a pretty low-tech,  primitive industry — after all, they just “chop trees and sell the  wood.” While the business at the core is exactly as simple as that, a big fat element of detail we often forget is that when you have to manage millions of hectares of wild forest land as a company, the challenge is anything but simple! This episode is about how AI is changing forest inventories and carbon monitoring. My guest is Rolf Schmitz, CEO of <a href="https://collectivecrunch.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Collective Crunch</a>: a company that provides data analytics solutions to forestry companies. They have spent the last 5 years building an extensive suite of ML products and have customers all over the Nordics. This is The Age of AI Series, where we talk to the foremost entrepreneurs and innovators around the planet using AI to transform their industries. Rolf and I get into the weeds (pun intended) of forestry and carbon economics, and give you the full picture: <ul> <li>01:45 — What’s going on in the forestry industry, and the concept of “forest inventory”</li> <li>05:57 — How forest yields and inventory are measured</li> <li>09:32 — Conventional methods of taking inventory of a forest, their error rates, pros and cons</li> <li>13:47 — How new data can improve the error rates of conventional methods</li> <li>16:13 — Brief history of LiDAR and machine learning methods in forestry — and the key factors affecting adoption rates</li> <li>22:12 — Why building tech products for an un-sexy industry like forestry has suddenly started gathering more attention recently</li> <li>24:54 — What makes one forest more “sustainable” than another, and why businesses are finally paying more attention</li> <li>31:05 — What Collective Crunch provides to their customers and how it works</li> <li>35:55 — The evolution of Collective Crunch; why  they chose their current business model (big strategic decisions and  reasoning for them)</li> <li>40:34 — The key technical challenges in building Collective Crunch, explained simply</li> </ul> Here's the blog post for this episode: <a href="https://sanpram.com/?p=1865&amp;preview=true" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://sanpram.com/2021/10/03/ai-for-forestry-collective-crunch/</a> This podcast is produced by Sanpram Transnational Corp., an education and media company helping non-technical professionals be tech-fluent. See our programs: <a href="https://sanpram.com/teaching/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://sanpram.com/teaching/</a>