Plymouth becomes first Minnesota city to monitor tree health using AI

CBS News

3 days ago

The City of Plymouth is the first in Minnesota to help monitor tree health with data using artificial technology.
Leaf by leaf, Conor Nolan, who's a navigator for Greehill Smart Tree Inventories, showed WCCO a new kind of data collection he does on a daily basis, driving no more than 23 miles per hour.
"So what's happening is the scanners in the back are spinning around," Nolan said while describing the technology.
You'll likely see those scanners on this vehicle roaming Plymouth streets for the first few weeks in August.
They're collecting information from the roughly 40,000 trees covering Plymouth city parks, roads and other public spots, looking for dying trees with drooping leaves that could soon spell problems.
"Hopefully, the idea is to lower the amount of storm damage and tree failures that happen," said Paul Buck, the city's forester.
Last November, the city council approved a contract using funds in the parks and forestry budget, specifically the tree preservation funds, which are funds collected from developers when tree impacts occur due to construction.
The funding is intended to assist the city in managing the tree canopy.
The companies, Davey in partnership with Greehill, have also helped cities like Dallas, Las Vegas and Burbank. They provide ground-based scanning and machine learning AI to process tree data, starting with an initial scan.
"It's going to pinpoint down to making me more hyperfocused on, what are the 10%, 20% trees that seem to have an issue," Buck added.
This helps the city save on landscaping costs and get ahead of potentially dangerous storms.
"Rather than being reactive, be proactive," said Buck.
The city says a survey like this would take them by hand nearly three to four months and would come out quite subjective, which is something the new tech can tackle in nearly two to three weeks with data.
"The focus will be on what trees need the most work right now," Buck said.
Another street scan will occur in two years, providing further tree health data as a comparison, hoping the four-year contract helps maintenance costs fall and branches don't.
For more information on the City of Plymouth Forestry, click here.
The City of Bloomington says they'll also soon participate in a Smart Tree Inventory.