Tree Inventory Editing Web-GIS App

geographIT^®, a division of EBA Engineering, Inc., developed a mobile friendly web-GIS app for Casey Trees enabling tree planting crews to update the tree inventory from the field as they transplant trees from the tree farm in northern Virginia to locations throughout metropolitan Washington DC. Nursery trees have QR tags attached that encode a unique tree identifier and the tree species. When the tree is transplanted to a new location in the metropolitan area, crews use their smart phones or tablets to “transplant” the tree using this web app.

When transplanting a tree, crews find their metropolitan location using the web app. They then scan the attached QR tag on the tree to select the nursery farm tree record, or they manually enter the tree’s identifier if the QR tag is missing. They position the base map imagery and then “digitize” the new location by clicking on a “move tree” button. The last step is to enter job site and planting project data. This basic tree editing workflow is simple to learn and does not require much training for the field crews.

The web app runs in standard Apple, Android, and Windows browsers, so it is compatible with smart phones, tablets, laptops, and desktops. It adapts to fit the screen size and aspect ratio of the device running the web app. Office staff use the web app to research metropolitan planting project history and tree species that were planted in different metropolitan areas. In the few cases where cellular signal is not available at the job site, office staff update the tree inventory using the web app.

The web app was developed as custom widgets using Esri’s Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS Developer Edition and the ArcGIS API for JavaScript. It is cloud-hosted in Azure.