News & Events

The European Space Agency and Treemetrics Announce Groundbreaking Real-Time Forest Intelligence (RTFI) Service

1 March 2012

Treemetrics, the leading global forestry technology company, today [Thursday] announced a project supported by the European Space Agency and Enterprise Ireland, to develop a Real-Time Forest Intelligence (RTFI) service for the very first time, bringing live 3D forestry data to mobile devices and machinery anywhere in the world.

Treemetric’s new on-demand service will be ubiquitous, available in any location in the world, no matter how remote, allowing harvesting machines to respond immediately to changing market demands for timber, while massively reducing waste.

This dynamic innovation in forestry technology will transform traditional industry practices, as the optimum level of data or accuracy has never been available to the $50B global forestry sector. Prior to this, the only available data for forest managers was based on 19th Century measurement techniques and severely limited by cellphone coverage, leading to significant error rates in both revenue and carbon credit estimates.

Speaking at the announcement, Ireland’s Minister for Research and Innovation, Mr. Sean. Sherlock T.D. said: “Treemetrics is a truly encouraging example of an Irish start up company developing innovative technologies with the support of Enterprise Ireland and the European Space Agency that will lead to export sales and employment growth. It is fast growth, market leading companies like Treemetrics that will form the basis of Ireland’s economic revival.”

The Treemetrics RTFI service also provides the added safety benefit of a highly effective emergency communications network for forestry workers around the world, who frequently work in remote locations with limited access to cellphone networks.

Enda Keane, Treemetrics CEO says “This is a huge step for the global forestry industry. Until now, timber production requirement was only established after the forest had been cut, leading to enormous waste. The Treemetrics RTFI service will completely revolutionize this process by delivering our rich forestry data to harvesters in real-time. This is only possible through the years of research and development invested into our platform and is simply impossible for traditional measurement methods.”

Professor Amnon Ginati, the Head of the Integrated Applications Department at ESA stated that; “ESA is very pleased to support a great idea coming from this young entrepreneurship, as well as with the endorsement that it is receiving both at a political level and from Enterprise Ireland.”

The RTFI service builds on Treemetrics groundbreaking analytics platform and 11M-tree database (the largest in the world) developed over the last five years by the Ireland-based company. Treemetrics technology is now in use across over 14 countries and has generated in excess of €20MM for its customers in the last twelve months alone.

About Treemetrics

Treemetrics was founded in 2005 by Enda Keane and Garret Mullooly. Based in Cork, Ireland, the company has spent a number of years developing its measurement and analytics technology to replace the traditional forestry methods which have been in place for over a century. Treemetrics is considered by most experts to be the leading technology company in the forestry sector.

For more information, please go to www.treemetrics.com

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ENDS