[Talk-us] Municipal Tree Survey

[Adam Old]

Hello all, I am a fairly novice mapper, although I am learning quickly.
This is my first post to talk-us, so let me know if this is the wrong place
to ask these questions.

I am currently sitting on a "Tree Board" in a small city in South Florida.
One mandate of the board is to survey the existing tree canopy in an
ongoing fashion and to provide recommendations for trimming, removal, or
new plantings, to note diseases and damage, and to collect species
information.

I am a proponent of OpenStreetMap and crowdsourcing as much of the data
collection as possible, as we are without much of a budget or staff. But I
wonder whether this is an appropriate use for OSM, and if so, whether there
are caveats or special things we should be thinking of. One of the other
members of the board is an experienced GIS user, and he also likes the idea
of using OSM.

For the most part we would like to send people out using their mobile
devices and an app like Go Map!!
https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/go-map!!/id592990211?mt=8 or a paper survey
form that we could then update OSM with. Hopefully this would introduce a
good number of new people to OSM as mappers and/or users. We also were
hoping to add some datapoints for the diameter_crown and height using LiDAR
and aerial data. Any suggestions on this?

There is some information that isn't standard for Tag:natural=tree that
would be useful for us in this pursuit, for example whether the trees are
damaged, need trimming, date of last trimming, etc. Maybe that is too
specific to map and we shouldn't add that kind of data? If I were to add
it, would I simply add my own tags? I would like to do this right.

Also, is there a map view with diameter_crown displayed as the actual size?

Also also, is there any thinking on differentiating between palm trees and
other broadleaved trees? Seems like a worthwhile distinction, here in the
tropics.

Thanks!
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