INESC TEC in study about forest biomass supply chains in Portugal

INESC TEC in study about forest biomass supply chains in Portugal

A team of INESC TEC's Centre for Enterprise Systems Engineering (CESE) promoted an initiative to present a study on the analysis of forest biomass supply chains in Portugal in a meeting that had the support of the Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests (ICNF), which took place on 4 April in Lisbon.

14th May 2019

The team, namely Alexandra Marques and Jorge Cunha, has been digging into aspects related to the characterisation of forest biomass supply chains with a view to the different types of exploitation, including the production of electrical energy, as well as heat and other emerging applications such as biocompounds and other biomaterials.

This activity aimed at presenting the methodology developed by INESC TEC, presenting its capacities as a supportive tool for the definition of scenarios and strategic planning, and gathering contributions so that the tool can be improved and used by the agents of the sector.

The meeting, which was led by Jorge Cunha from INESC TEC, had 27 participants of the forest and energy sector, including representatives of Statistics Portugal (INE), Directorate General for Energy and Geology (DGEG), ICNF, ALTRI, Sonae-Arauco, The Navigator Company and Centro Pinus.

The main conclusions of this meeting are the relevance of the study concerned and of the methodological model proposed for the analysis of biomass flows, which may contribute to meet a need felt by the different stakeholders. On the other hand, it is important to highlight the need to improve the quantity and quality of the support information, while ensuring that the data is the most recent, from systematic collection and detailed whenever possible. Finally, it was clear the importance of reinforcing the work through the collaboration between the different entities that produce and/or hold information relevant to the study.

Regarding the work developed by INESC TEC in the forest biomass area, there are other ongoing initiatives, which are part of a line of work entitled “biomass supply optimization”, led by Alexandra Marques, Ricardo Soares, Jorge Cunha and Reinaldo Gomes, in partnership with Filipe Santos, colleague from the Centre for Robotics and Intelligent Systems (CRIIS), and Pedro Amorim and Maria João Santos from Centre for Industrial Engineering and Management (CEGI). This line has several projects, namely FOCUS – Advances in Forestry Control and Automation Systems in Europe, which is funded by FP7, EasyFlow - A Collaborative Platform for coordinating the logistics in the forest-based supply chain towards sustainability, which is funded by FCT, and BIOTECFOR -  Biobusiness and Technology for the efficient valorisation of endogenous forest resources in the North of Portugal and Galicia, which is funded by the programme Interreg V-A Spain-Portugal 2014-2020 (POCTEP).

The researchers mentioned in this news piece are associated with INESC TEC and UP-FEUP.