Romanian Cyber Security Journal / Spring 2026, No. 1, Vol. 8

Forest Management: A Holistic Critical Infrastructure and Key Asset Approach Engaging Satellite View, A.I., Drones and Private Blockchain-Based Decision Support Systems

Paul NICULESCU MIZIL GHEORGHE, Ana Mihaela VASILEVSCHI

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Abstract

One of a nation’s strategic key assets is its forests. They deserve a perpetual and high degree of care, a sustainable management that requires observation, a legally defensible evidence and integrated intelligence. Given the growing requirements of evidence imposed by European and national silvic frameworks, there is a need to address some struggling approaches like illegal logging, climate induced degradation and a large restoration monitoring.

The conventional forest management frameworks of governance still remain predominantly reactive, relying on providing field inspections, fragmented information systems and outdated declarative reporting.

This article presents an “in vitro” digital public system-of-systems infrastructure entitled ForestOS, dedicated to the next generation forest governance and represented in a visual language for GIS based forest Digital Twin of Romania. This proposed architecture is developed as a conceptual governance framework supported by systems engineering principles, geospatial intelligence workflows, AI-assisted risk modeling and permissioned blockchain auditability mechanisms. The article does not present a deployed operational implementation, but defines a reproducible national-scale architecture intended for future pilot validation and institutional testing.

The platform uses satellite and aerial remote sensing, drone-based monitoring and precision afforestation, a natural language model for interacting with an Artificial Intelligence (AI) layer - all with an integrated human-in-the-loop Decision Support System (DSS) and a permissioned blockchain architecture, serving as a fundamental trust layer for institutional accountability, evidence, integrity and non-repudiation.

The Multi-Criteria Decision and Analysis platform ForestOS is designed to early detect loss of canopy as well as many others, like vegetation stress monitoring, detection of tracks of illegal transport and objective verification with AI of afforestation and reforestation programs. The results are auditable indicators for environmental, social and governance, together with climate and biodiversity reporting. The ForestOS fundamental architecture represents governance first, human authority, explain ability and legal accountability is augmented in institutional capacity and responsibility.

ForestOS - conceived to create a visual language over a digital public infrastructure, necessary in strategic importance, cadastral systems and national institutional registries. It is designed to establish a unified operational picture of decision makers in all forest-related governance and monitoring authorities. It supports forest protection recommendations as well as restoration within a coherent system. ForestOS is a paradigm shift towards a continuous, intelligence-driven oversight of national forests.

Keywords

SoC, Alert Correlation, Cybersecurity Monitoring, Incident Management, NIS2 Directive, SIEM