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Forest Management Information System(FMIS)
An integrated approach to forest management

E. W. Ted Robak
Professor of Forest Operations
Management, Faculty of Forestry and Environment Management,
University of New Brunwick, Canada.

Bhaskara R. Murty
Consultant Siemens Information Systems Ltd., Chennai
Email: bhasker.ramamurty@blr.sni.de


The FMIS can be used for strategic, tactical and operational planning and implementation, and operational control in and across administrative units and levels of the organisational hierarchy.

The Forest Management Information System (FMIS) is envisaged as an integrated system which will be used to support the planning, implementation and monitoring of multi-objective forest management activities. The FMIS can be used for strategic, tactical and operational planning and implementation, and operational control in and across administrative units and levels of the organizational hierarchy. Besides the databases and models required to support decision-making in the many programs of the Department, the FMIS also has the ability to maintain current forest inventories and generate maps of spatially-oriented data ( e.g. attributes of entities depicted on a map, such as population of a village, whose location can be fixed on a map). The components of the FMIS, which will necessarily be linked, are a Monitoring Information System (MIS), a Geographic Information System (GIS), and an Image Processing System.

Modern Forest Management Principles
Erdle and Sullivan, among many others, suggest that it is time to apply a "new paradigm" in forest management:

  • the decision-making process should be opened up to allow increased public participation;
  • the set of forest values receiving explicit consideration in management should be expanded to include biological diversity, wildlife habitats, and ecological health among others:
  • the focus of management should change from stand and forest to ecosystem and landscape; and
  • our perception of the forest should change from a human and economic orientation to an environmental and ecosystem one.

Modern, responsible forest management focuses on ensuring the sustainability of forest resources, ecosystems, and the social and economic structures that rely on them. It is no longer considered acceptable for strategic, tactical and operational planning to be undertaken in isolation. All levels of planning must be linked over all time horizons, and plans must be tied to monitoring systems. Decisions should be based on what is best overall for the organisation.

The principles of integration are reflected in the design of an Integrated Forest Management System (Fig.1).


Fig 1: FMIS Components


Planning Process in the context of Indian Forest Management
Goals of Indian Forestry - Maintaining environmental stability and conserving the natural heritage. Checking soil erosion, denudation, desertification. Increasing forest cover & the productivity of the nation’s forests. Meeting the forest-based needs of rural and tribal populations. Encouraging efficient utilization of forest products and maximizing substitution of fuel wood. Involving citizens in the achievement of these goals.There is no strict definition of what constitutes an IFMS, and perhaps no consensus, as to how one should be designed and developed. However, a practical integrated system should probably include the following elements: forest inventory data and models; growth and yield data and models; other silvicultural , biological and physical data; harvest scheduling and forest management planning models; other industrial forecasting and strategic planning data and models; operational analysis, planning and scheduling data and models; compatible accounting (or cost and production tracking) systems and capital budgeting procedures.

Forest Monitoring -It is necessary to be able to determine the status of the forest estate (its biological and physical elements, locations and boundaries) at regular intervals, and to track the dynamic nature of the forest based upon these periodic audits. In general, two major technologies are used for data gathering (remote sensing and field surveys using GPS), while GIS and specially designed MIS are required to maintain this data and translate it into useful information.


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