Forests management in the metaverse: the potential of forest digital twin and blockchain for preventing crimes

Forest management is a crucial aspect to ensure environmental sustainability and ecosystem protection. The EU has noted that the forestry sector is frequently the object of crimes that damage and alter the single European market. The use of new technologies, such as the Forest Digital Twin (FDT) and the blockchain, can offer greater precision in forest management and ensure the traceability of forest products, creating a reliable chain of custody. The FDT makes it possible to reproduce a digital replica of a real forest area, providing a faithful and analytical description of the life cycle, of the entities and processes that compose it, to predict risks and opportunities for improvement. By implementing the FDT with the blockchain it is possible to provide a complete tamper-proof record of the state variables recorded at both the tree and forest level, allowing to create a just, robust and economically viable chain of custody of the wood supply chain. The objective of this work is to propose an innovative approach to guarantee environmental sustainability and transparency in the wood supply chain thanks to the integration of FDT and Blockchain with a view to preventing crimes. Thanks to the design of a digital forest, by integrating the state variables of the trees it will be possible to monitor the entire production cycle synchronously with execution. This approach makes it possible to collect a continuous flow of data before and after use, guaranteeing the prevention and repression of offenses and supporting the authenticity and integrity of the internal chain of custody, in compliance with European and national legislation, as well as the recent European law against counterfeiting. In conclusion, the proposed framework can represent an important innovation to ensure sustainable forest management, by advanced technologies, with a view to preventing and repressing crimes in the wood chain.