City Trees is a premier publication focused on urban + community forestry. In each issue, you’ll learn how to best manage the trees in your community and more!
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/648999
www.urban-forestry.com 13 examples provide a model for organizations to aggregate, ana- lyze, share, monitor, and report on urban forestry efforts and planting programs. The PHS Urban Forest Cloud Application The Pennsylvania Hor ticultural Society (PHS), founded in 1827, is a Philadelphia-based nonprofit that has been leading greening effor ts in the region for decades. PHS works with many par tners to educate residents and plant and care for trees through its Tree Tenders, Plant One Million, riparian, and tree giveaway planting programs. Since 1993, the Tree Tenders program has offered training and trees to more than 150 municipalities and Philadelphia civic groups each planting season, resulting in 1,500-2,000 trees planted each year. After planting, many groups actively maintain, monitor, and repor t the health of their trees by par- ticipating in Tree Checkers. As you can imagine, many different types of tree and project data are collected, managed, and reported for Tree Tenders and other PHS planting programs. Historically, this data was man- ually entered and maintained in spreadsheets (26 of them, to be exact), making data collection, management and reporting quite cumbersome. In seeking a centralized database and ver- satile tool to manage project data and better track the health and maintenance of trees, PHS contracted with Plan-It Geo to develop the PHS Urban Forest Cloud (UFC). The UFC features a collection of all data gathered for individual trees and projects and enables multiple user groups to update and manage tree information that is stored in a central database and map. There are fields for tracking information such as site approvals, species, tree condition, volunteers, location, and maintenance needs/activities. The tool has forms to receive online tree applications, create planting lists and nursery orders, and allow volunteers to collect tree information in the field. Administrators. The UFC app contains multiple login levels. The advanced admin user has the ability to sor t, filter, edit, and repor t on any field as well as add or restrict fields in either a table or map view. Views of the PHS Urban Forest Cloud online software including the welcome page, panels for each planting program, and individual tree plantings.