App to help Thane manage green cover

A city hailed for its natural heritage and biodiversity, Thane will now own its own Tree Census Application that will provide geo-enabled data of its green cover, based on Geographic Information System (GIS) and Global Positioning System (GPS) technology. The Rs 87 lakh cloud-based project is set to create a digital database of over five lakh trees in the jurisdiction of Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC).

Civic officials confirmed they have already floated a tender to hire an agency that will create the data within two year’s time. The agency will not only carry out geo-enabled tree census using GIS and GPS technology, but also develop an exclusive tree census application that will operate and manage the data under provisions of the Urban Tree Act.

The agency is slated to cover an area of about 128.23 sq km divided in 10 Ward Zones that are further oriented into 65 prabhags (smaller divisions). For the census, trees with girth of 10 cm or more and more than 3 metre in height will be considered. As the census of trees needs to be carried out using GIS and GPS Technology with handheld devices, officials said the information will be mapped to the GIS Base Map based on high resolution cloud-free satellite imagery provided by the TMC.

“As the agency is supposed to complete the work within two years of the time when the contract is awarded, they are also entrusted with the responsibility to maintain the application software and the census database for a period of five years or next tree census from the appointed date,” said a senior official from TMC.

Talking about the importance of the project, officials claimed that the latest technology, asked to be used in the project, automates the tree census process, and will digitise the tree census data. At the same time, every tree surveyed will bear a tree identification key, latitude, longitude and other tree data, which will be available with or without Internet access once the application is launched.

“The real-time data access will enable us to keep a watch on the green cover and at the same time provide information on the current status of the trees,” said another official. “As the Tree Census web application should be able to generate reports such as Property-wise Tree Census related data, it will show the user or surveyor all the necessary information including user route, greenery density, species, location, or advanced filters such as diameter, date planted, or tree characteristics,” he added.