Giovanna Ottaviani Aalmo
Research Scientist
Editors
Giuseppe Scarascia-Mugnozza Guallart Vicente Fabio Salbitano Giovanna Ottaviani Aalmo Stefano BoeriAbstract
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Authors
Giovanna Ottaviani Aalmo Beniamino Gioli Divina Gracia P. Rodriguez Diana Tuomasjukka Hai-Ying Liu Maria Chiara Pastore Fabio Salbitano Peter Bogetoft Arne Sæbø Cecil KonijnendijkAbstract
The greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions in the European Union (EU) are mainly caused by human activity from five sectors—power, industry, transport, buildings, and agriculture. To tackle all these challenges, the EU actions and policies have been encouraging initiatives focusing on a holistic approach but these initiatives are not enough coordinated and connected to reach the much needed impact. To strengthen the important role of regions in climate actions, and stimulate wide stakeholders’ engagement including citizens, a conceptual framework for enabling rapid and far-reaching climate actions through multi-sectoral regional adaptation pathways is hereby developed. The target audience for this framework is composed by regional policy makers, developers and fellow scientists. The scale of the framework emphasizes the regional function as an important meeting point and delivery arena for European and national climate strategies and objectives both at urban and rural level. The framework is based on transformative and no-regret measures, prioritizing the Key Community Systems (KCS) that most urgently need to be protected from climate impacts and risks.
Abstract
Many forestry roles have changed from being manual tasks with a high physical workload to being a machine operator task with a high mental workload. Automation can support a decrease in mental fatigue by removing tasks that are repetitive and monotonous for the operators. Cable yarding presents an ideal opportunity for early adoption of automation technology; specifically the carriage movement along a defined corridor. A Valentini V-850 cable yarder was used in an Italian harvesting setting, in order to gauge the ergonomic benefit of carriage control automation. The study showed that automating yarder carriage movements improved the ergonomic situation of the workers directly involved in the related primary tasks. However, the caveat is that improving one work task may negatively affect the other work tasks, and therefore introducing automation to a worksite must be done after considering all impacts on the whole system. Practitioner summary: Automation decreased the winch operator’s mental workload while improving overall productivity. At the same time, the mental and physiological workload of the operator tasked with bucking were slightly increased. Ideally, winch automation should be coupled with bucking mechanisation to balance the intervention and boost both operator well-being and productivity.
Authors
Niels Strange Peter Bogetoft Giovanna Ottaviani Aalmo Bruce Talbot Anders Holm Holt Rasmus AstrupAbstract
The forestry sector is constantly looking for ways for making data-driven decisions and improving efficiency. The application of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) allow the users to go beyond looking at simple key performance indicators. Benchmarking is one of the most common tools in business for improving efficiency and competitiveness. This study searched for benchmarking studies in Web of Science until December 2020. It reviewed 56 benchmarking studies in forestry and discusses the potential advantages of using benchmarking in forestry. More than 80% of the studies apply DEA. This review found that almost half of the benchmarking studies in forestry have attempted to estimate the efficiency of forest management organizations at regional scale, mostly being public or state-owned forest districts. A bit more than one-third of the studies have focused on benchmarking forest industries and one-fifth, benchmarking of forest operations. Forest management organizations mainly applied benchmarking for internal comparison and forest industries entirely focused on competitive benchmarking. Surprisingly, in most cases the studies do not necessarily overlap geographically with forest rich countries (e.g., Russian Federation or Brazil). A number of studies address multiple criteria. The future potential for applying automatic data transfer from harvest machines to interactive benchmarking systems are discussed. Finally, the paper discusses the advantages and weaknesses of benchmarking and future research on improving usefulness and usability of benchmarking in forest businesses.
Authors
Giovanna Ottaviani Aalmo Pieter Jan Kerstens Helmer Belbo Bogetoft Peter Bruce Talbot Niels StrangeAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Raffaele Spinelli Rien Visser Natascia Magagnotti Carolina Lombardini Giovanna Ottaviani AalmoAbstract
Integration of technology is commonplace in forestry equipment supporting higher levels of automation and efficiency. For technology adoption to be successful it must demonstrate improvement in productivity, cost–effectiveness or in human factors and ergonomics. Cable yarding lends itself to automation with repetitive machine movement along a fixed corridor, as established by the skyline. This study aimed at investigating the difference in productivity between the two possible settings (manual and automated) of a Valentini V850 yarder equipped with automatic path programming, with a Bergwald 3-t carriage and radio controlled chokers. The study took place in the northern Italian Alpine eastern region over a period of 8 days on two separate corridors, resulting in 280 measured cycles split between manual and automated. Results in terms of absolute numbers were very close for the two system options, but significant differences were found. For example, inhaul time was longer, but outhaul time shorter for the automated system. Productivity ranged from 8.2 to 13.3 m3 PMH-1, and cost from approximately 20 to 30 € m-3. The automated system did achieve a significantly higher productivity, but differences declined with extraction distance. When that was combined with the slightly higher cost for the automated system, the automated system was more cost-effective on extraction distances less than 200 m, and the manual system on longer distances.
Authors
Rasmus Astrup Niels Strange Pieter Kerstens Peter Bogetoft Uli Dietz Giovanna Ottaviani Aalmo Bruce TalbotAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Michela Zanetti Corrado Costa Rosa Greco Stefano Grigolato Giovanna Ottaviani Aalmo Raffaele CavalliAbstract
The quality requirements of wood biofuels are regulated by a series of harmonized international standards. These standards define the technical parameter limits that influence the quality of solid biomass as a fuel. In 2014 the European reference standard for solid biofuel was replaced by the International ISO standard. In the case of wood chips, the main difference between the European and International standards is the definition of particle size distribution classes. In this context, this study analyses the quality of wood chips and its variation over the years according to the “former” (EN 14691-4) and “in force” (ISO 17225-4) standards. A Soft Independent Modelling of Class Analogy (SIMCA) model was built to predict the best quality of wood chips and to clarify the relationship between quality and standard parameters, time and changes in the standard regulations. The results show that, compared to the EN standards, classification with the ISO standards increases the samples belonging to the best quality classes and decreases the not classified samples. Furthermore, all the SIMCA models have a high sensitivity (>90%), reflect the differences introduced to the quality standards and are therefore suitable for monitoring the quality of wood chips and their changes.
Abstract
Winching is common in small-scale forest operations, especially on steep slopes, where tractors cannot reach the logs inside the forest. In this case, logs are dragged to the roadside with tractor-mounted winches, for later collection by transportation units. Winching is a heavy task, posing a high physiological stress on winching crew members. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between experienced workload, work conditions and operator fitness. The study confirmed the assumption that fit, young operators experience a lower workload than older ones. Workload depends on winching direction, and it is higher when winching downhill than when winching uphill. Results confirmed that gravity is the main factor, and it has a stronger effect than task type and tool weight. Walking uphill with no tools is heavier than walking downhill and carrying a steel cable. As a consequence, tool weight reduction can only palliate the problem, without solving it. Winching crews should be composed of fit, young workers. When the task is assigned to older workers, it is necessary to allow longer rest breaks, accepting a lower productivity. Keywords: steep terrain, winching, workload, heart rate
Abstract
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Authors
Giovanna Ottaviani AalmoAbstract
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This study presents the analysis of panel data on steep terrain logging productivity in Norway. Given the specification of a Cobb Douglas stochastic frontier production function in which the technical inefficiency is a function of six different environmental factors, it was found that only one (terrain hindrance) decreased the efficiency significantly. The estimated efficiencies for the sample crews ranged from 0.43 to 0.99. Because of the nature of the inefficiency factors, one way to improve the efficiency could be to train the crews for working on steep slopes. This would also improve the safety when exposing workers to these types of environmental hazards.
Authors
Giovanna Ottaviani AalmoAbstract
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This study examined the difference in workload brought about by exchanging a 3.5mm steel rope with a 4.0 mm synthetic fiber rope when dragging a strawline up a 300 m corridor in setting up a new cable-yarding line. Physiological workload was monitored through heart rate measurement, while the physical forces acting on the subject (rope mass and friction) were quantified using a dynamometer attached to a belt. While there was a substantial difference in force between rope types at full extent (140 N vs. 40 N), the result was less significant when seen against the total work required in moving the subjects own body mass up the slope. The direction of the resultant force vector appears to play an important role in the way that strain is experienced. It was discovered that 300 m was the maximum hauling distance for a single person using this rigging method with a steel wire strawline, whereas for the synthetic rope, the same tensile force would only be reached at 1200 m. This alone has important implications for labor saving amongst small cable logging teams.
Division of Food Production and Society
ENFASYS - ENcouraging Farmers towards sustainable farming SYstems through policy and business Strategies
Today’s farmers find it difficult to deal with the several lock-ins within food systems that keep them from transitioning to sustainable farming systems. Policies, together with business models and social innovations, need to be strengthened to overcome lock-in challenges
Division of Food Production and Society
BlueRev - Revitalisation of European local communities with innovative business models and social innovation in the blue bio-based sector
The aim of the EU-funded BlueRev project is to encourage innovation in local communities by focusing on “blue” sustainability and creating positive environmental impacts.
Division of Biotechnology and Plant Health
IPM Decisions
Stepping-up integrated pest management decision support for crop protection. IPM Decisions aims to accelerate impact from Decision Support Systems (DSS) for Integrated Pest Management (IPM). The project will deliver DSS, data, tools and resources through a pan-European online Platform and an IPM Decisions Network.
SINOGRAIN II
Scientists from NIBIO and CAAS are working together using innovative technologies in order to improve productivity, food safety and sustainability in Chinese agriculture.