Development and Funding

FORCE is primarily developed by David Frantz (Contact). The software has emerged from my PhD research at Trier University, supervised by Prof. Dr. Joachim Hill, online available.

Many people have contributed to FORCE in one way or the other. Most prominently, these people are all the co-authors on the Publications that are related to FORCE. Less prominantly, but not less important, these are many of my previous and current colleagues at the ERSG and EOL labs that have shaped the development of FORCE through our collaborative work and many on- or off-topic discussion. Starting with version 3.0, other people have actively developed code. Thanks to Franz Schug for providing the Landscape Metrics module.

The development has been supported by several research projects:

  • Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management Project (SASSCAL), funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research under grant number FKZ-01LG1201C

  • Sentinel4GRIPS, funded by the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure under grant number FKZ-50EW1605

  • Near-Real Time Derivation of Land Surface Phenology using Sentinel Data: the FORCE-NRT approach, funded by the Geo.X Research Network for Geosciences in Berlin and Potsdam under grant number SO_087_GeoX

  • Understanding the Role of Material Stock Patterns for the Transformation to a Sustainable Society (MAT_STOCKS), funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant number 741950