“DEViR”: A Software for Determining and Visualizing Optimal Tree Felling Direction in Three-Dimensional Terrain

Abstract

Felling trees, which is the basis of forestry activities, is dangerous and difficult work that needs to be performed carefully. These activities can affect forest workers’ safety, damage the remaining forest, or reduce the value of the extracted product. Most of the accidents and injuries in forestry operations occur due to the trees not falling in the desired direction. Directional mistakes in tree felling processes or underestimating the criteria negatively affect the felling process, which may increase the damage on the product. In terms of life safety and property quality, not only the felling direction but also the safe escape route for the crew should be determined during tree felling. If these issues are ignored due to incomplete information or carelessness, they can cause serious safety problems. However, work safety can be improved through training programs. The primary purpose of this study was to develop a training tool, called “DEViR”, to assist loggers for determination and visualization of the optimal tree felling direction. "DEViR" software was specifically designed to determine the ideal tree felling direction, as well as the escape route for the crew, and dangerous work zone according to safety rule of two tree in a 3D virtual environment. The sample application of the software was run considering artificially placed trees in a study area located in the city of Erzurum in Turkey. The findings of the sample application indicated that the use of this computer-aided simulation systems can provide felling direction solutions with high accuracy and details that cannot be done by a logger’s decision. The results indicated that as the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) and orthomosaic resolution increases, "DEViR" can perform more realistic modeling and accurate calculations, but computation time and hardware requirement increase with increasing data size. Also, it was found that "DEViR" software is a good training tool as it presents visual material, animates the tree felling process interactively, and reflects the result of every decision to the user. Thus, it has great potentials to increase the performance of the loggers in training and daily felling operations.