Azavea looks to expand PhillyTreeMap software

It turns out that people all across the country are getting into tree mapping and Azavea, the Callowhill-based GIS mapping firm, hopes to make their open source software, OpenTreeMap, the standard framework for documenting urban tree inventory, Azavea president Robert Cheetham told Technically Philly.

At last year’s Philly Tech Week, Azavea launched PhillyTreeMap, an app that brought crowdsourced tree mapping to Philadelphia, as Technically Philly reported. With successful implementations in Sacramento and San Francisco, as well, Azavea now has a similar tree mapping pilot program running in Washington D.C. and just signed an implementation in Grand Rapids, MI, Cheetham told Technically Philly.

Over the weekend, Cheetham (@rcheetham) tweeted about a “New #OpenTreeMap implementation in San Diego j.mp/x3tDPn,” however Cheetham told Technically Philly the program was launched by a partner organization called Urban Ecos, an ecological consulting firm, that was using the OpenTreeMap code.

Azavea developed and maintains OpenTreeMap, though anyone can use the open source tool. All of the tree mapping initiatives use this free code. Cheetham told Technically Philly that he’d been told Code for America fellows based in New Orleans are implementing a similar tree mapping effort there, as well.

As more urban citizens learn to track the trees they share their city streets with, Azavea’s software could help create a continental map of urban forestation.