Using free and open source software for forest monitoring and assessment, such as Open Foris, is critical to ensure the sustainability of Bangladesh Forest Department’s mandate to manage and conserve forests in Bangladesh.

Development of a strong forest monitoring system with suitable baseline information archive is necessary for sustainable tree and forest resource management. An enriched baseline largely rely on robust inventory data collection with proper data management and analyzing process. Under Bangladesh Forest Inventory (BFI), a software application developed in FAO called 'Open Foris Collect' is being used to ensure efficient data collection and management. The Bangladesh Forest Department, with technical support from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, organized a training on Open Foris from 1-4 April 2018. This training builds on two trainings on Open Foris organized in 2015 and 2016.

Touhidor Rahman, Forester from Bangladesh Forest Department, highlighted the benefits of Open Foris Collect for field data collection and reduction of potential errors, increasing the robustness and the quality of the Bangladesh Forest Inventory.

While the BFI field data collection is about to be completed, many lessons are learned from the field data entry, submission and management. These practical lessons will be useful for the forest department when the next inventory will be designed and implemented. Mr. Ricci Stefano, a leading expert from “Open Foris” developer team in Rome, provided an advance level training to 16 participants from BFD and FAO. The training focused on key principles of data submission, data processing, data management and data analysis using Open Foris Collect (OFC) and OFC Mobile. Additionally, the training provided the opportunity to evaluate the existing BFI field survey form, data collection and data management procedures and made recommendations for improvement.

Mohammad Hossain, NFI data analysis consultant at FAO Bangladesh, said 'Free and open source software, such as Open Foris, contribute to the sustainability of the NFI data collection, management and analysis, and the robustness of the forest monitoring process in general'.

Using Open Foris collect for field data collection and analysis is being fully deployed under the Bangladesh Forest Inventory process. While it is fully operational for forest assessment, it can be used further to support other forestry activities and other sectors. 

Click for more