MyWoods
A mobile app for private forest owners in Portugal
The MyWoods App idea had its early beginnings in 2016/2017, during my Master's studies in Germany. It started as an innovation project for university, but since then, it became a personal project that influenced my career choices.
In Portugal, over 90% of the forests are managed by about half a million of private land owners, such as my parents and extended family. Most of these private foresters own less than 5 hectare of land, often distributed over several small plots which makes forest management very challenging. In 2017, I conducted a small online survey to understand the needs of private foresters in Portugal and I started to look for ways to solve some of the challenges.
Digital Forest Management
Currently, small forest owners still use the same methods for forest management as 50 years ago. Although they may own an iPhone to actively use social media, they return to word-of-mouth to find relevant foresty information as there are no reliable digital tools available to them.
There are various opportunities today to close this gap, especially giving the availability of satellite information to monitor local situations, reduced server costs to store user information, and the increased number of smartphone users in Portugal.
The MyWoods App is an attempt to contribute to the digital transformation of the foresty sector in Portugal.
The first version of the MyWoods mobile application allows iPhone users to quickly and unambiguously identify the limits of their rustic and mixed properties, using the geolocation capabilities of their iPhone.
In case of a lost device, the user can recover the data from any other iPhone using their MyWoods account. Users can also share information in a simple way through a KML file, sent to the email adress of their "MyWoods" account.
The MyWoods App is available for iOS and Android smartphone users for a one-time download cost of 7,99€.This price is intended to cover for the cost of investment and for the continuous maintenance of the mobile app.
