ToSIA - Tool for Sustainability Impact Assessment
This is ToSIA (Tool for Sustainability Impact Assessment), the decision support tool for the forestry sector. With this tool, forest-based industry, national and international policy makers, and researchers can analyse the sustainability effects of changes due to deliberate actions (e.g. in policies or business activities) or due to external forces (e.g. climate change, global markets). ToSIA analyses environmental, economic, and social impacts of changes in forestry-wood production chains, using a consistent and harmonised framework from the forest to the end-of-life of final products. It allows users to analyse different kinds of sustainability effects in a balanced way. The first versions of ToSIA are the products of the EFORWOOD project financed by the 6th Framework Program of the European Commission (ToSIA 1.0). The further development work of ToSIA has been taken up in the Northern Periphery Programme (NPP) project, Northern ToSIA (ToSIA 2.0).
ToSIA is a flexible tool, based on three concepts:
- Alternative process chains (baseline and scenarios);
- Material flow along the chain (e.g. wood, timber products, reindeer meat - all converted to tons of Carbon);
- Indicators per process and indicators multiplied with the material flow ToSIA assesses the sustainability impacts of alternative supply chains.
Outline of ToSIA approach