COMMUNITREE: Connecting tree databases to the public, improving urban tree data for business, government and research

他说：“市区的树木对我们的文化、文物、市区环境，以及身心健康和福祉都极为重要。它们让我们的公园、城镇和城市生活得更舒适，让它们在炎热中保持凉爽，减少洪水泛滥，净化空气，为野生动物提供家园。我们城镇的古树是与过去生活联系在一起的。在城市环境的压力下照看树木是困难的：维护环境、管理树木的负面影响(即建筑物下沉和对道路的损坏)以及保护树木、人和财产的安全是相互竞争的需要。对于公共土地上的树木，这项任务主要是地方当局及其签约协助它们的公司的工作。但随着预算的削减和工作量的增加，监测和管理城市树木正变得更加具有挑战性。此外，考虑到这项任务的规模，地方当局和承包商等组织并不总是完全理解普通公民为他们周围的树木分配价值的方式。为了妥善照顾我们的城市树木，我们需要让公众分担所有权和责任；参与收集有关他们的信息可能会有所帮助。不幸的是，我们目前的系统不允许这一点：在存在数据的地方，它们是分散的，以不同的方式在不同的计算机系统上收集，并存储在远离公众访问的地方。一些城市有在线树木地图，但没有一个城市允许公众直接贡献数据。这给持有和管理数据的组织带来了巨大的负担，阻碍了他们相互合作和公众更好地管理他们的树木。COMMUNREE项目旨在开发一个世界领先的应用程序和网站，它将建立世界上最大的开放树木地图，并成为公众与负责城市树木的人分享的基础，以监测、管理和了解我们城镇的树木。我们将利用我们作为英国城市树木公民科学领先组织的地位，与参与城市树木的其他组织、地方当局和私营部门密切合作，实施数据收集标准，使数据能够在这些不同的用户之间完全传输。归根结底，我们希望这些工具能够帮助负责城市树木的人与公众合作，更有效地管理它们，造福树木和人类。

"Trees in urban areas are vitally important parts of our culture, heritage,urban environment; and physical / mental health and wellbeing. They make our parks, towns and cities more pleasant to live in, keep them cool in the heat, reduce flooding, clean the air and provide homes for wildlife. The ancient trees of our towns and cities are living connections to the past.Looking after trees in the pressures of the urban environment is difficult: there are competing needs of maintaining the environment, managing the negative impacts of trees: i.e. building subsidence and damage to roads; and keeping trees, people and property safe. For trees on public land, this task is mainly the job of local authorities and the companies they contract to assist them. But as budgets are cut and workloads increase, monitoring and managing urban trees is becoming more challenging. In addition, given the scale of the task, organisations like local authorities and contractors do not always fully understand the way that ordinary citizens assign value to the trees around them.To properly look after our urban trees we need to allow members of the public to share ownership and responsibility; and joining in with collecting information on them can help. Unfortunately our current systems don't allow this: where data exist they are fragmented, collected in different ways on different computer systems and stored away from public access. Some cities have online tree maps, but none allow members of the public to contribute data directly. This places a large burden on the organisations which hold and manage the data and stops them working with each other and the public to better manage their trees.The COMMUNITREE project aims to develop a world-leading app and website which will build the world's largest open tree map and become the basis for members of the public to share with those responsible for urban trees in the monitoring, management and understanding of trees in our towns. We will use our position as the UK's leading organisations in urban tree citizen science to work closely with others involved in urban trees, local authorities and the private sector to implement a standard for data collection that will make data fully transferable between these different users. Ultimately, we expect these tools to help those responsible for urban trees work with the public to manage them more effectively for the benefit of trees and people."