Park asset management doesn’t have to be complicated, all it takes is the right tool

September 30, 2021  | Ian Hanou

PlanIT Geo™ is first and foremost an urban forestry company. We have an office full of self-identified tree nerds, who revel in solving urban forestry and tree care challenges with GIS-based workflow technology. So why did we create an application dedicated to parks?

There are two reasons.

First, parks are too important to ignore. Large or small, these green islands in the gray cityscape provide support for nearly every critical urban need. Parks have an outsized influence on the environmental, economic, and social success of a city.

We can’t effectively or fully do our part to tackle the challenges of urban greenification without addressing the entire fabric: trees and parks, public and private property, public, private, and nonprofit sectors. As a company committed to “mapping a greener future”, we knew we needed to include parks in our mission to improve green asset management.

Second, we knew we could do it well. We had already developed the globally successful TreePlotter™ INVENTORY application and clients kept asking for more. “While we are surveying our trees, can we also inspect other assets? What about mapping, identifying, and scheduling maintenance for benches, flower beds, or playgrounds?” So we decided to augment the INVENTORY platform to make it applicable for a much broader range of assets and users.

Thus TreePlotter™ PARKS was born, and its applicability extends far beyond traditional parks and playgrounds. PARKS can be used for asset management of gardens, facilities, campgrounds, natural areas, open spaces, arboretums, sensitive wildlife areas, drainages, wetlands, and more.

How Our Clients Use TreePlotter PARKS

It turns out many of our clients go through a similar evolution.

They are looking for a better tree management solution and find their answer in TreePlotter INVENTORY. Arborists and other staff quickly learn how to use INVENTORY, appreciate its practicality, and start thinking about other non-tree assets that they manage and how helpful it would be to include them in the same application.

Some of our clients prefer to pay to add a single new map layer to their INVENTORY application to track one additional type of asset. Other clients prefer to upgrade to TreePlotter PARKS to get complete flexibility to add and track a range of different asset types. Let’s look at some real world examples of how our clients are simplifying their “green” asset management needs.

Cairns Region, Queensland, Australia

The Cairns Regional Council manages the public trees in their 1,600 square kilometer (660 square mile) local government area. Their team of arborists, botanists, and contractors were looking for a new database software solution.

They settled on TreePlotter INVENTORY as a user-friendly option their staff would embrace in the field. They were also interested in adding and developing an additional custom map layer that could track fungi in their tree population. This additional “Fungi Layer” allows the community to record when they see fungi on trees, which can later be tracked and investigated by a mycologist. The flexibility of the application allowed Cairns to develop a custom solution, and they are now in a better position to identify at-risk trees and administer treatment at earlier stages, all while engaging citizens.

“We were looking for a “one tool” system. We had multiple teams using separate tools to do their job, none of these tools or systems spoke to each other.”

-Josh Reid, Forestry Coordinator, Conservation Halton

Simplifying Park Asset Management

The common thread in all of our applications is high-powered functionality in an easy to use format. We know the faster it is for personnel in the field to learn a new tool, the more that tool gets used. Higher usage means more comprehensive data collection and an easier time tracking, budgeting, and achieving Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

We designed TreePlotter PARKS to provide just what is needed to effectively manage park assets, without extraneous functions that overcomplicate operations or extend training time. For example, one of our PARKS clients, The Battery (formerly Battery Park) in New York City, was using a universal asset management software that is popular with public works and transit departments. It was more than they needed, and that excess complexity was slowing things down. They switched to TreePlotter PARKS to move faster without sacrificing quality.

Our browser-based application allows for a quick rollout, with no additional device purchases necessary. Any phone or tablet can be used to locate assets, assess condition, store photos, measure, monitor, report, or share. There is flexibility built throughout the application, with customizable data fields, map layers, and reports, as well as variable user access roles.