As part of ForestPaths’s activities dedicated to the forestry industry in Europe, the open-source Python tool aiphoria was developed to allow a dynamic assessment and visualisation of wood material flows. Following its introduction in 2024, Cleo Orfanidou from the European Forest Institute sat down for an interview on the instrument as the researcher heading this endeavour. The conversation took place as part of the project’s annual general meeting last September.

An onset for the interview was provided by a presentation of ForestPaths’ underlying aspiration - to evaluate the potential of forests and wood products to mitigate the effects of climate change. Zeroing in on the latter, the project’s team has recognised the importance of examining the entire supply chain to determine the true carbon storage potential of outputs from this sector. Ms. Orfanidou linked this to the development of aiphoria as a tool allowing users to monitor the utilisation of wood across Europe from the moment of harvesting the material to its various intended end uses.

Monitoring the wood stocks and stock changes is at the core of aiphoria as it facilitates both static and dynamic assessment of wood products from a temporal point of view, utilizing the Open Dynamic Material Systems Model (ODYM). An Excel file is sufficient for users to feed data to aiphoria, which then provides detailed information on material stocks, stock changes and temporary carbon storage potential over time. The construction of an interactive Sankey diagram has also been integrated into the workflow to ensure a user-friendly visualisation of the results.

Being an open-access tool, aiphoria is meant to be widely shared and improved upon as the user community becomes more involved in its development. Furthermore, aiphoria can also be used for any material system other than wood, allowing it to be deployed in a wide range of other assessments.

You can find more about the tool here. The full interview can be accessed below: