SIP software is essential in terms of import substitution policy in the remote sensing field announced by the Russian government. In July 2016, government approved transition plan instructing state bodies and state-owned companies to switch to Russian software. National program «Digital Economy of Russia» envisages a strict deadline for switching to Russian software. Namely, by 2024 more than 70% of government bodies and more that 50% of state-owned enterprises are to use Russian software.

In Russia, forest inventory field is of particular significance. For instance, the Russian government implements the federal project «Conservation of Forests» within the national project named «Ecology». The SFI project is also a large-scale project aimed at quantitative and qualitative evaluation of forest plantations. For instance, it will be possible to estimate total timber reserves in Russia with an accuracy of up to 95%. Said project is currently at its second stage.

«State Forest Inventory project is under way all over the world. It allows determining, firstly, how many «planet lungs» are left on the Earth, secondly, what will be happening to them in the future and, thirdly, what measures should be adopted now to ensure their preservation. Noxious emissions into the atmosphere are on the rise, trees are able to absorb carbon dioxide and store carbon in the wood. We need to be sure that forests can produce more oxygen, as well as absorb the necessary amount of carbon dioxide. The SIP software is a unique solution to the problem, since it determines forest areas, as well as their age and species composition. Combined with ground-based measurements imagery data processed by the Russian software allows Roslesinforg to calculate the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by our forests and assess the contribution of Russia to the global air purification», noted Mikhail Zimin, SCANEX Deputy CEO.

«The software helps to better and in due time identify factors that have negative impact on forests, accurately assess the amount of stored carbon, as well as determine the importance of our country's forests in the global ecosystem. First data will already be known this year for five regions, namely, Altai Krai, Leningrad Oblast and St. Petersburg, Jewish Autonomous Oblast and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. In general, Roslesinforg also uses remote sensing technologies for tracking illegal logging. Satellite monitoring contributes to reducing the number of forest legislation violations, in other words, has a preventive effect», emphasized Stanislav Fedorov, Head of State Forest Inventory and Accounting Department in Roslesinforg.

Remote sensing technologies also help solving other forest industry tasks, for example, expert assessment of wood reserves, analysis of forest cover death, dieback and disease problems, evaluation of wood volume and wood-related parameters, logging infrastructure optimization task, ensuring industry transparency.

«SCANEX considers remote sensing technologies in the forest industry as an important business area. For instance, the Forest Service is widespread in preparing reports on forest use, reforestation and afforestation. Roslesinforg is our long-term partner. We are thankful for their trust in our products and services. We are glad that our services will contribute to addressing such global task as state forest inventory and forest conservation in Russia. However, ScanEx Image Processor® software is much in demand in other industries as well. It is essential in power engineering, agriculture, mining, geodesy, cartography and many other business fields. While our country is in transition to full software import substitution, we encourage all interested companies to consider purchasing the SIP software and to discuss all matters of concerns with us. We are ready to offer individual purchasing terms depending on the number of licenses required», noted Valery Barinberg, SCANEX Deputy CEO.

The ScanEx Image Processor® software was developed in 2004 (v. 5.3 is currently used). SIP supports the majority of modern remote sensing data formats and demonstrates high productivity levels while featuring a user-friendly and intuitive interface. The software provides the entire set of tools required for addressing tasks of preliminary data processing, as well as creating thematic products. Moreover, SIP relies on over 10 algorithms of image classification and theme-based processing based on both traditional clustering mechanisms and neural network technologies. SIP evolves in accordance with the users' demands and technological development, namely, the latest SIP version has a new tool for generating depth maps of the coastal areas based on extra-high resolution data, as well as a new option to calculate first and second generation errors when estimating the accuracy of the classification results.

Thus, ScanEx Image Processor is a modern and powerful software that allows users to post-process received data, as well as conduct its analysis creating thematic products and/or key features on images, which is widespread in data science, big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, etc.