Multimodal strategies for greener and more resilient wood supply

Important results from the project

The scope of this study was to catalogue parameters, patterns and driving factors for quantifying the effects of weather and seasonal events on wood procurement, in production and transports including multimodal transports. The project case studies in Austria, Sweden and Norway represent different wood supply chains in continental, sub-arctic and oceanic conditions having different challenges. The project hypothesis is that by examining these relationships between the contrasting conditions of the three climate zones, differences in key driving factors will be more apparent.

Expected long term effects

The common analytical framework enables direct comparisons and is applicable to many other cases. The effect of winter snowpacks on wood supply varied between regions and were identified as both an enabler and a hindrance, in the Swedish case as an enabler and impacts production also due to fluctuation in temperature. Downstream effects of reduced production can be delayed in accordance with the mapped lead times and smoothed by road-side stocks. Regardless of the main factors driving variation in supply flows, these analyses have succeeded in explaining residual seasonal variation.

Approach and implementation

To capture differences between production and transport in the three study cases, possibilities for collecting similar data and use of statistical methods were identified and refined throughout the early stages of the work. The selection aimed to enable a consistent comparative analysis between the cases. The framework provides a common structure for description of the round wood flows from forest to customer, including seasonal variations and resulting lead-times.