Advancing the European Forest Bioeconomy (Client: European Forest Institute)

Forestry

The Context & Challenge:

The European Forest Institute (EFI), known for its pivotal role in forest research and policy support, faced a challenge of advancing forest management and the forest bioeconomy. Specifically, EFI’s Bioregions Facility promotes transregional cooperation within EFI for a sustainable and integrative forest-based circular bioeconomy. The Bioregions Facility aims at building a community within the forward-thinking regions across Europe to unlock regional potential through international knowledge exchange on the forest bioeconomy.
EFI and their Bioregions Facility entrusted Ubuntoo with the task of creating a framework to identify and support innovative solutions to address these pressing challenges.

The Deliverable:

EFI and Ubuntoo developed a dynamic knowledge management hub, called “Forest Bioeconomy in Action“. This hub was driven by artificial intelligence and human curation, to unearth, discuss, and disseminate innovative ideas in the realm of forest bioeconomy. This platform encouraged the discovery of solutions and facilitated active collaboration, allowing EFI’s bioregions members to discover best practices and news. It featured filters for solutions based on criteria such as location, development stage, and organization type. Ubuntoo’s AI tools powered the Bioregions Innovation Hub, while the Ubuntoo and EFI teams collaborated on content curation.
Ubuntoo and EFI worked together to examine and map innovations from the growing database of news, solutions, companies, intellectual property filings, scientific publications, and more. A monthly newsletter was also sent out to members to present stakeholders with potential forest solutions, articles, and upcoming events of interest.

The Result:

Ubuntoo and EFI facilitated collaboration between over 160 members within the platform and added hundreds of innovative solutions as well as news articles relating to the forest bioeconomy. The platform also boasted numerous knowledge publications.
The “Forest Bioeconomy in Action” community also expanded its scope to feature solutions tackling several impact sectors, including bioenergy, carbon farming, construction, green infrastructure, wood & cork, wood fiber products, and more.