AS "Latvia's National Forests", SIA "Latvijas Finieris meži" and SIA "Bergvik Skog", own, operate and upkeep around 30% of all of Latvia's territory. They have decided to open their databases of geospatial inforamtion on their land and make it accessable to any who wish to use their data.
The basic units of the economic activity planning of a forest management company are land properties and forest districts within them, which are upkept by the State Land Service and the State Forest Service. Geospatial data on land units and defining/important information can only be bought directly from the State Forestry service, therefore, large land owners access to valuable information about their own land comes at a substancial price. Limited access to land units and territoty information makes it difficult for business to operate, work with each other, exchange information. Along with that it also restricts development of IT based solutions with these data, which would otherise promote econimic activity, efficiency and help with projects in a variety of other sectors.
AS "Latvia's National Forests" (LVM) in managing, have suported development of geospatial information technologies (GIT) for years now, and have one of the largest GIT platforms and databases in Latvia. The LVM developed GIT paltform is also used by other forest managament companies like SIA "Latvijas Finieris meži" and SIA "Bergvik Skog". A central platform allows them to more effectivley transfer and share data, work together to develop the system and data questions/problems, represent the interests of geospatial data and technology companies in the country and more effectivley communicate with service providers.
LVM and our associates believes that any resident and company in Latvia should have free access to information about the boundaries of the units of land, owners of land units, and also the boundaries of forest districts.
Geospatial data can be found for free to any interested people/parties at:
- AS "LVM" geospatial information technology buisness solutions homepage :http://www.lvmgeo.lv/dati
- Latvia's open database portal https://data.gov.lv/dati/lv/organization/lvm