The Rise Of Big Data And Supporting Technologies In Keeping Watch On The World'S Forests

Technology-driven advances in the gathering, processing and delivery of big data are making it easier to monitor forests and make informed decisions over their use and management. This paper first describes how innovations in remote sensing and cloud computing are enabling generation of geospatial data more often, at lower cost and in more user-friendly formats. Second, it describes the evolution of systems and technologies to trace forest products, and agricultural commodities linked to deforestation, from source to final use. Third, it reviews the potential for emerging data mining technologies such as natural language processing, web scraping and computer vision to support forest policy analysis and augment geospatial data gathered through remote sensing. The paper gives examples of how these technologies are being used and may be used in the future to monitor and respond to deforestation, fire and natural disasters, improve governance by enabling faster and more comprehensive analysis of social networks, policies and regulations, and increase traceability and transparency within supply chains.