Cambridge, MA City Arborist Picks TreeWorks for Urban Tree Inventory

The Problem

Kelly Writer, City Arborist for the Department of Public Works (DPW) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA had a problem typical of municipalities large and small: how to effectively manage the thousands of urban trees within the city limits. Street trees in Cambridge, as in many urban areas, are a valuable asset to the city's residents, who often express their concerns about the timely maintenance, protection and replacement of these trees. Another constant issue for the urban arborist is the identification of hazardous trees in a timely manner-such as a dead branch that overhangs a parking spot-and to remedy the hazard before it causes damage to property or someone is injured.

Writer needed a detailed and comprehensive street tree inventory to track species, size, location and tree condition, but more importantly, this information needed to be easily accessible for managing the maintenance priorities of the tree crews. The Cambridge DPW completed tree inventories in the 1980s using stand-alone software but they found this data ineffective. It was difficult to access the tree data which could not be integrated with their existing ArcGIS mapping, information management and work order system. Writer needed a better, easier way to manage the trees under his charge that was more flexible, powerful and works seamlessly with their existing ArcGIS mapping system.


The Solution

He turned to The Kenerson Group, an ESRI business partner, to provide the solution for managing Cambridge's street trees. The Kenerson Group is the developer of TreeWorks, a community tree management software extension for ArcView 9.X. First seen by Writer at a Massachusetts Tree Warden conference, he learned of the software's ability to efficiently develop an ArcGIS-based street tree inventory that could be fully integrated within their existing digital mapping environment, and its maintenance data could be linked with the DPW's server based work order system. One of his colleagues in a western state who successfully uses TreeWorks recommended it, so Writer invited The Kenerson Group to provide a demonstration for himself and Eric Josephson, the DPW's GIS manager. They ultimately decided that TreeWorks would be a good fit and installed it in the summer of 2005.


The Results

Since installing the TreeWorks extension into their ArcGIS system, Writer's staff of four has inventoried over 4,000 street trees in about one and a half months. Josephson uses ArcMap to delineate work areas, and staff arborists are sent out to the target neighborhoods. The arborists use hand held computers (PDA's) running ArcPad 6.0.3 and TreeWorks Mobile with street and building layers and a high resolution color aerial photo of Cambridge. The selected neighborhoods are easy to locate on the PDA screen and the ArcPad resolution allows the arborists to identify individual trees on the photo. These trees are located in the field and accurately mapped in the TreeWorks Sites layer in ArcPad. For each tree, the arborists then enter the site information, tree attributes and maintenance information into TreeWorks dialogue boxes; the data is stored in linked tables managed by TreeWorks. Upon completion of the day's inventory, the PDA's are brought back to the GIS office, connected to the main ArcGIS computer with the TreeWorks desktop extension, and the new data is automatically synchronized with the existing master TreeWorks database.After the synchronization process, the PDA's are ready for another day of tree inventories. "TreeWorks has an easy interface" says Writer, "and we have been happy with the smooth operability."


Conclusion

The Cambridge ArcGIS tree inventory, about one quarter finished as of this writing, has already helped answer city resident's needs regarding street trees. At a recent neighborhood meeting, some residents expressed their concern over future street tree maintenance. They wanted to know what system was in place to prioritize tree care issues such as planting trees, removing tree stumps and identifying hazards; for example, locations where tree roots are lifting up sidewalks and driveways-a situation especially important to the elderly. The arborist staff had just inventoried the trees in the concerned neighborhood using TreeWorks, so Writer was prepared with comprehensive ArcGIS maps and data showing the exact location of the street trees, their condition and, to the satisfaction of the residents, he provided a general timeframe for addressing the problems his staff identified. "This type of scenario is exactly what we were hoping for," explains Kenneth Mack, TreeWorks' lead developer. "We implemented TreeWorks within the ArcGIS platform, because we knew it would enable user organizations to leverage the data and functionality of their existing ArcGIS systems, as well as the knowledge and skills of their GIS staff."

TreeWorks has given the DPW access to better, timelier information, and easily linked it to their existing ArcGIS environment. For example, according to Writer, "...we thought we had 56 stumps in the entire city. So far a quarter through the inventory we have located 86 stumps" that are now added in a ArcGIS layer and data table which need to be addressed. Better information always leads to better decision making, and the arborists at the DPW look forward to completing their ArcGIS based TreeWorks inventory to ultimately better serve the citizens of Cambridge.

For more information, contact The Kenerson Group at 2342 Main Street, Athol, MA 01331 www.kenersongroup.com email: jclarke@kenersongroup.com, afabos@kenersongroup.com, or kmack@kenersongroup.com

info@kenersongroup.com.

Press questions contact: info@kenersongroup.com