Dynamic Forest by OCELL

What is your product?

Dynamic Forest is the digital operating system for forestry. It offers the first cloud-synchronized geodatabase for all data and processes in forestry. While most software solutions in forestry only map individual aspects of operational processes, Dynamic Forest offers the full integration of all geospatial data in combination with operational workflows, map material and much more. With Dynamic Forest, all those involved work in a common database that is synchronized via the cloud and thus always remains up to date.

How did you come up with the idea?

We started out by analyzing forests and distributing our results to clients as geodata. We soon realized that this kind of data is hard to use in day-to-day operations as usually only a single person in a forestry company has the technical understanding to interact with this kind of data. So we decided to create Dynamic Forest, a platform for managing forest operation, easily accessible to all stakeholders.

How big is the team?

We have 4 full-time Flutter Developers, 1 PO, and 2 Backend Engineers. Overall, the company has 50 Employees and 11 People in engineering.

What challenges have you had to overcome so far?

Forest is a very map centric software, we had to get a feature rich GIS implementation going. At the time when we started out with the project in the beginning of 2021 the Mapbox Flutter implementation was missing many features we needed. Google Maps was also missing features but on a more fundamental level, so it was not an option. So, we had to contribute a significant amount to the mapbox flutter plugin that was purely maintained by volunteers. On a more general note, we also struggled with hiring Senior Flutter Devs, as the ecosystem is just that novel.

Another big challenge was the necessity to have an offline first application, with all the challenges for synchronizing changes this entails.

How successful is your project today?

We currently have 768.000 hectares of forest area on the platform, roughly 25 times the size of Munich, and have 2600 professional forest professionals using it. We managed to acquire most major private forest owners as customers.

What are the next milestones?

We are currently launching a new product that empowers forest owners to enhance their forest management practices. By providing compensation for additional CO2 stored, we not only aim to increase carbon sequestration but also improve biodiversity within forests. This new product will support broader climate goals and contribute to a healthier planet.

We will also integrate this new product with the Dynamic Forest platform. The next feature will be allowing users to customize and extend their data structure, as well as create custom workflows. At the same time, we are looking at new markets in the Nordics, so we will implement new features targeting this market.

How can we find you?

Our website is at: https://www.ocell.io/