Forest Data Space
The Digital Ecosystem
for the Forest
The Forest Data Space (FDS) enables forest owners, practitioners, and researchers to find and apply the best approaches to make their forests climate resilient. It is a solution for the effective and secure exchange of forestry data.
What is a Data Space?
A Data Space is a distributed infrastructure that enables members of a community to securely share and use data, without giving up control over the data.
Click here to learn more about data spaces
Event:
SmartForest 2025
Data Spaces & AI for
Forestry & Environment
When: 13 & 14 March 2025
Where: TU Munich | Freising
SmartForest 2025 creates a space where science and practice can come together to develop solutions that will make forestry more digital, innovative, sustainable, and climate adjusted.
Topics:
- The Forest of Today
- The Forest of Tomorrow
- Data & AI
- Silviculture & Forestry Practice
The FDS makes Data Accessible
Inside the data space, you can access a wide range of data sets and can share your own sensitive data, while retaining full sovereignty and control of how your data is used and by whom.
Rapid global warming and associated extreme weather events such as storms, heavy rainfall, droughts, and the increased occurrence of pathogens, pose considerable risks to both forests and the forestry industry. In the coming years, this will require forest stewards to take far-reaching and difficult decisions.
To find the best possible solutions, researchers, forest practitioners, and related service providers need a great variety of high-quality data. This allows them to make data-driven decisions around forest transformation and management. Currently, this data is neither findable, nor accessible, nor interoperable.
Who is part of the FDS?
A data space is the sum of its parts, here we explain who belongs in the FDS and which benefits they derive from it.
Forest owners and practitioners
State and private forest owners and enterprises benefit from integrated smart services, such as planning and inventory management tools.
Service providers
Decision support systems, forest management software providers, and forest machinery vendors, and others can easily offer value added services to generate leads and gain revenue.
Researchers
Researchers can access forest and environmental data shared by other stakeholders that is harmonized, interoperable and with clear usage guidelines. Having access to open data can lead to breakthrough research and innovation.
Policy makers
Access to coherent and processed data on the state of play can provide policy makers with better ways to subsidize transformation and tools to develop effective and far-sighted policies.
The Benefits of Being Part of the FDS
The goal of the FDS is to improve the availability of high-quality data for private and public decision-making processes and to foster open innovation.
Through the data and tools that are part of the FDS, risks related to climate change can be mitigated and revenue can be protected or enhanced, especially considering carbon capture and other incentives. It also contributes to biodiversity and to the social and recreational functions of forests.
Impact
Share your data with fellow forest practitioners and researchers to jointly find better solutions for everyone.
Access to Data
Make reliable decisions based on high-quality, AI-ready data, shared by all partners in the data space.
Sovereignty
You stay in control of your data and decide who may use it for what.
Ease of Onboarding
You can bring in your Forest Inventory data easily using our automated process, and then get access to better models and simulations.
Interoperability
All data is accessible through standard interfaces and formats and can easily be re-used in approved apps.
Interested in Becoming Part of the FDS?
The Forestry Data Space is an open ecosystem that you can join in one or multiple roles.
Researchers, Software Providers, Major Data Holders, Forest Owners, Practitioners and Wardens.
Click here to learn more
Learn More About…
…the data we provide in the FDS
The FDS includes a wide range of data including forest management data, data on climate
and soil, on tree species distribution and tree health, as well as in situ sensor data
…the standards and formats that apply
Existing standards and formats are used and applied throughout the FDS.
…the data space concept
A data space is a data exchange where trusted partners share data for processing without
sacrificing data sovereignty.
…the architecture of the FDS
The architecture of the FDS uses a decentralized approach, meaning that data can remain
physically with the respective data owner until shared with a trusted party.
…how you can join the FDS
You are already in the right place! Learn more by continuing to read on this page and
reach out to join us when you are ready
…the rules that apply to data usage
A data sharing and usage policies that are in place about who may use what data for what
purpose.
…the governance structure of the FDS
Governance is central to the data space concept. A combined set of rules and standards,
as well as their technical implementation, that defines which roles exist within the data
space and the level of access to data that each of these roles provide.