Heureka

General System description

System name: Heureka

Brief overview

The Heureka DSS is a system for multi-purpose forestry planning and analysis. It consists of a suite of freely available software. It is developed by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU).

The first official version of the DSS was released in September 2009, and is currently being tested and improved.

Scope of the system

The system covers the whole decision support process from data inventory to tools for selecting among plan alternatives with multi-criteria decision making techniques. The software applications are intended for both large-scale and small-scale forestry and are designed for different users' specific problem areas.

The utilities handled today are timber and bio-fuel production, carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and recreation. It is divided into three different tools, depending on the potential users and problems:

• RegWise - Regional analyses of forest development
• PlanWise - Planning and analyses for small and large companies
• StandWise - Analyses of silviculture treatments and stand development for single stands

Heureka applications will be developed to cover all forest management decisions; from national and regional planning to small forest management planning, and from strategic level, long-term planning, to operational decisions^[1].

System origin

• The system has been developed as a central part of the Heureka's research programme that was carried out during 2001-2009 by SLU and Skogforsk. A dedicated unit at SLU is now responsible for system maintenance and development.
• The system was developed by a group of 4-5 professional developers.
• The system is freely available and can be downloaded from the internet. However, the system is not open source for the time being.
• Currently, there are about 300 registered "downloaders". One forest company and one forest owners association have started to implement the system.

Related systems

Heureka aims to eventually replace two Swedish former DSSs^[2]:

• the Hugin system, and
• the Forest Management Planning Package.

References

Cited references

1. ↑ ANONYMOUS (2005): The Heureka Research Programme. Final Report for Phase 1, October 2002–September 2005. Alnarp, Umeå and Uppsala. (pdf available)
2. ↑ ANDERSSON, M., B. DAHLIN et M. MOSSBERG (2005): The Forest Time Machine — a multi-purpose forest management decision-support system. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, 49, 114–128.

External resources

• Homepage: http://heureka.slu.se/wiki
• LÄMÅS, T., G. STÅHL et B. DAHLIN: Facts About Heureka (pdf available)
• Heureka annual report 2006 (in Swedish). (Heureka Årsrapport 2006)