Forest Information System Development for Japan Forest Stakeholders
In partnership with PreFore in Japan, the project set out to deliver a modern Forest Information System (FIS) for Japanese forest stakeholders including municipalities, forest operators, and the national forest management office in the Nagano prefecture.
Challenge
About 50% of private properties in forests are not digitized in Japan yet.
- Nagano is a widely forested and mountainous prefecture
- Inaccurate shapes and areas are written on paper
- Steep terrain and undigitized records are the largest obstacles for planning and implementation of operations
Three different types of forest management entities in Nagano joined us as pilot users to let us know their unique needs in forest management and test out the new system.
Solution
The resulting platform, ForPas, includes both web and mobile applications. Together, they allow users to:
- Share forest data through a central server
- Access and use map information
- Plan harvesting and afforestation activities
- Delineate stand boundaries
- Support day‑to‑day forest‑management workflows
The system was developed using an agile methodology. Throughout the project, the team remained in continuous communication with PreFore, ensuring alignment between development progress and user expectations.
Demonstrations of newly implemented features were conducted every one to two months, allowing feedback to be incorporated directly into the development roadmap.
ForPas for national and private forest management in Japan
The project reached successful completion in 2024, culminating in:
- Deployment of the fully operational Forest Information System to the partner’s production hosting environment
- Release of the Android mobile application on the Google Play Store
After deployment, the project transitioned smoothly into the maintenance phase, ensuring ongoing support, updates, and continuous improvement.
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