GPS Data Capture

The first rule of managing anything is knowing what it is and where it is. Even for small projects, you have to know where the trees. Things become tricky if either of these data points is missing. This is where GPS data capture is invaluable.

 

Greenwood Consulting uses GPS data capture to create a map of the elements that you are mapping.  These maps can then be used with a vast amount of other spatial data such as footpaths, park benches, fire hydrants, property boundaries to create a comprehensive, stacked overview of the area.  We have captured data for more than 1.5 million trees and continue to on large and small scale data capture projects.

 

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Quality Assurance

 

Quality assurance should be built into just about everything that we do commercially and should be regarded as an integral and critical part of tree data capture. Greenwood Consulting offers this as an optional extra.

 

 

The key implication is that unless you do quality assurance you have no idea of the quality of the data that has been captured. If you are making critical decisions on your tree population based on the data you need to know that it is accurate.

 

It is recommended that quality assurance be undertaken on at least 2% of the data captured and should be a random selection.
 

What would happen is there were errors of species identification, errors of interpretation or the boundary was in a different position to the GPS data?  Quality assurance increases the chance of making sure that everybody's assessment is reasonably consistent across the data capture team. Without quality assurance, you cannot do that.

 

Yes - quality assurance incurs an extra cost but it saves money in the long term and should be an absolutely critical part of the process.