The project will improve national forest knowledge for building resilient, low-carbon urban and rural communities in the UNECE region. This will be done by developing tools and guidance for local and national policy planning for rural and urban forests and low-carbon forest product consumption. The Forestry and Timber Section has been gathering significant amounts of information on forests, forest management, and products for decades that are not always easily accessible through existing communication tools. This includes data on: forests, sustainable forest management; forest ownership; forest products and trade; wood energy, and; forest outlooks. While significant efforts have been made to collect, process, and disseminate these data sets, the potential of these large, long-term data series as extremely valuable policy and communication tools has not yet been fully realized. This phase of work on building a central repository will focus on reporting for the Joint Forest Sector Questionnaire and may be extended to other future datasets based on available resources and skills.  The central repository is the precondition for further implementing Information Technology in the Section’s practice that would enable the development of other tools to improve data collection, storage, analysis, and dissemination. It will also enhance the speed and communication reach of information on forests and forest products in the UNECE region.