Gallery
Description
The problem
A forestry operation knows where it has to cut: its stands are drawn, linked to contracts and stored in the database. What it doesn’t know is what is happening inside them. Has cutting started? Which machines went in, on which days and for how long? How much of the area is done? Is the work moving forward, has it stopped, or can it be closed?
Today, those answers depend on a paper work sheet that arrives late, incomplete and hard to read, or on someone crossing maps and GPS by hand. As a result, a stoppage goes unnoticed for days and a stand looks finished before it is. The machines already send their position while they work, yet the most important information still travels in an operator’s pocket.
The solution
Open the map, and it already knows. Each stand is shown in the colour of its status: in progress, paused, completed or no cutting recorded. One click shows the machines, the cutting days and intervals, the accumulated hours and the share of the area already done. Nobody drew anything new, nobody filled in a form, and the source database stayed untouched.
How it works
- Reads the boundary: it uses each stand’s original geometry, read-only.
- Follows the machine: it receives location, speed and engine RPM from Geotab. A point counts as cutting when it is inside the stand, with speed within the limit and RPM above the minimum set by the company.
- Returns the status: each cutting period becomes a strip as wide as the crane’s reach, eight metres on each side, clipped to the polygon. The painted area divided by the usable area gives the share done; combined with the days without cutting, it gives the stand’s status.
The company keeps control of the criteria: completion share, days without cutting, crane reach, maximum speed and minimum RPM are changed on one page, without touching the code. The chain runs on its own and can be re-run without duplicating history. Boundaries with errors are left out and listed instead of producing false numbers.
Beyond forestry
The system works wherever there is a drawn boundary and a machine that reports its position: in agriculture, to know which part of a field has been harvested or treated; in municipalities, to monitor fuel-break strips and green spaces; in quarries and earthworks; and in cleaning or snow-removal contracts.
Next steps
Close each day automatically overnight, predict each stand’s completion date from the recorded pace, and plug in the machine’s own RPM signal, for which a slot is already reserved.
Technology: PHP and Laravel, Leaflet on OpenStreetMap, two MySQL databases (the forestry one, read-only, and the application’s own) and the Geotab API.