RegioWoodTrain: Making Rail-Based Timber Logistics Visible
MovingLayersIn Austria, regional timber transport depends heavily on rail. When the railway comes under pressure – through station closures, but also through bark beetle infestation, drought, storm or fire – traffic shifts to the road, with direct consequences for CO₂ emissions, transport costs and the regional economy. What has been missing is an integrated, data-driven tool that makes these connections visible and their effects assessable in advance. This is exactly what the FWF research project RegioWoodTrain (2024–2027) is working on – MovingLayers is developing the web demonstrator with which, for example, the infrastructure ministry can simulate decisions.
Many data sources, one map
Geodata, mobility data, operational data (RailCargo) and forestry data come from different worlds and formats. The first GIS task is to bring them together into a consistent spatial foundation – the basis for any later analysis.
Making the transport network visible
Release 1 of the demonstrator makes base data and transport infrastructure spatially visible: where do the timber flows run, where are the relevant rail nodes, which capacities depend on them? This gives decision-makers a shared situational picture instead of scattered individual data.
From data to scenarios
The real value emerges when scenarios become comparable – for example CO₂ emissions in the event of a station closure versus continued rail operation. For this, AI-based simulation models from BOKU Vienna and a GeoKnowledgeGraph with Geo-AI from the University of Salzburg feed into the demonstrator. This allows transport to be planned more efficiently, sustainably and resiliently in the long term – these scenario functions are the goal of the coming project phases.
Our role: a bridge between technology and application
While the partners develop simulation models, data infrastructure and AI methods, MovingLayers ensures that these become a usable tool. We gather the requirements of stakeholders from forestry, logistics, infrastructure and administration, translate them into use cases and personas, facilitate co-creation workshops, and turn everything into an operable, map-based decision support. In the medium term, the system is intended to be operated productively by RailCargo Austria.
📋 Project fact sheet — RegioWoodTrain
Funding: FWF (Austrian Science Fund) · Duration: 2024–2027 (ongoing)
Consortium: BOKU Vienna (project lead), University of Salzburg / Z_GIS, RailCargo Austria, MovingLayers
Methodology: AI simulation models (BOKU), GeoKnowledgeGraph & Geo-AI (University of Salzburg), web demonstrator (MovingLayers)
MovingLayers’ role: Requirements, use cases, co-creation workshops, user-centred web demonstrator
Orchestrate spatial analyses yourself
Whether timber flows, infrastructure or your own domain data – the path from a spatial question to a robust result can be orchestrated with Kermit GeoAI, our optional QGIS extension.
