Arborist Go!

Arborist Go!- Scan the trees around you, report their health status and get rewards!

Out of all the 3-1-1 requests reported within the 2010-2014 period made available on the Open Baltimore database, a tremendous 17,112 entries fell under the category of tree inspection, tree maintenance and fallen trees. To put this into perspective, within the past decade, there have been 407 tree-related deaths in the US alone.

On top of all these cries for help, the city council staff have specifically pinpointed that tree surveys are a ‘very manual process’, that require time, financial and human resources.

Another problem that came up repeatedly, 12,831 times in fact, was the problem of illegal dumping. In St .Francis’ raw surveys of the 21217 community, residents from as young as 6 to residents as old as 79 all faced the same issue of trash and garbage management, seriously affecting their quality of life-- and definitely not helping the rodent problem.

Arborist Go! addresses the root causes of both these challenges.

A gamified tree mapping and monitoring tool which leverages the ethos of traditional citizen science projects whilst maintaining a sustainable business model. As users register trees, update their monthly health status and earn points, they are incentivised and rewarded with the chance to win discounts and deal coupons for eco-friendly products from collaborating companies focused on environmental causes such as Beyond Meat, Lush Cosmetics and Stainless-steel Straws.

Arborist Go! provides tree health status alerts in real time to the local council and environmental agencies to prioritise tree inspections and provides them with a database of updated vegetation information for urban planning, evaluation and research.

How does it treat the trash problem though? It is the opinion of many that litter and dumping are not a logistical problem in Baltimore but rather, a deep running cultural problem. By encouraging community members to get out, start exploring and interacting with their neighbourhood in a positive way, they are becoming more aware of the environment around them, hopefully stimulating the cultural shift that is needed to tackle this trash problem.

Once you create a user account on the app, users are able to scan and register trees with their phone cameras and report the health status of that tree. The geolocation and health status of the tree is then stored in the database and the user is launched into a game experience with the chance to win discount and deal coupons which are stored in their in-app wallet, redeemable at participating stores. To ensure that it is in fact a tree that is being scanned and that a single tree is only registered on the database once, the google vision API for tree recognition is employed as well as only allowing the registration of a single geolocation.

Technologies used NodeJS web app, using jquery

Google vision API for tree recognition

Google map API for geolocation of user+tree

Firebase with mail authentication

Bootstrap for rendering dynamic and mobile friendly pages

Future steps

Complete database

API for detecting direction and distance of a tree

Exclusive tree detection

Better user experience