How much wood could a woodgrower grow if a woodgrower would grow wood? Relaunched Wood2Energy site has the answers.

July 26, 2016 |

BD TS 072716 ecostrat smIn South Carolina, the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities relaunched a revitalized wood bioenergy facility database and mapping tool. The site is the most comprehensive database of its kind in North America.

The vision for Wood2Energy.org was to develop a database and mapping tool that aggregates facility level data to deliver a unique perspective of the wood bioenergy industry. With separate, clickable layers and simple symbology organizing data by facility type, size, operational status, and additional detailed information for each data point, users have the ability to plot and contextualize data from the macro-level down to the site-level.

To execute on this vision, the Endowment engaged Ecostrat Inc. to develop and manage data delivery using GIS mapping technology to render the very large, complex dataset in a simple, user-friendly way.

The data itself, which has been aggregated from the public domain (existing databases, industry publications, reports, press releases, newsletters, etc.) will be updated on an ongoing basis by the Ecostrat data management team. Given the scale of this project and the dynamic nature of the market segments covered, anyone with information to fill gaps or fix errors is asked to support the overall effort by contacting Ecostrat with information.

Reaction from the stakeholders

“The Endowment is pleased to present this dataset and delivery tool. We are constantly working to retain and restore healthy working forests; promote value streams from forests; and enhance community capacity, collaboration, and leadership. Tools like wood2energy.org enhance our work by providing information that yields a better understanding of current conditions, reduces risk for investors and communities and allows stakeholders to have a common information base upon which to facilitate conversations,” said Carlton Owen, President and CEO of the Endowment.

“This project is remarkable from a data collection and management standpoint” said Brett Hogarth, Head of Business Development at Ecostrat, “but to me what really makes it a success is the data curation. A lot of thought and effort was put into how to best organize and present the data to balance the need for detail with ease of use and accessibility. Perhaps the greatest power of this tool is its ability to be used by experts and non-experts alike.”

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