[OGRUG] RStudio, CIty of Ottawa Trees Dataset & Ottawa Tree Canopy Project.

Anyone in the OGRUG community have a bit of time & expertise to share
towards advancing data-driven analysis of Ottawa's trees using R?
Some current discussion is forwarded below.

Note to Daniel and Erwin: OGRUG is the Ottawa-Gatineau R Users Group.

Joseph Potvin

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Daniel Buijs <dbuijs at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, May 17, 2014 at 5:48 PM
Subject: Re: CIty of Ottawa Trees dataset
To: Erwin Dreessen <erwin_dreessen at ncf.ca>
Cc: "J. P. Unger" <ungerjp at yahoo.com>, Amy Kempster
<Amykempster at bell.net>, "Nicole Desroches (home)"
<nicolepdesroches at gmail.com>, Sol Shuster <sshuster at magma.ca>,
elina.here at hotmail.com, Jason Kania <jason.kania at ymail.com>, Joseph
Potvin <jpotvin at opman.ca>


Hi Erwin,

It would take a bit of work to turn this into an app, and I'm afraid
that's a skill set that I don't have at the moment ;) I would be very
happy to chat with someone technically inclined who would be
interested in turning it into an app, and I could perhaps suggest some
more or less straightforward ways to do that.

The file that the city published is in a format that can be opened by
Google Earth, but it was just so massive that I stopped waiting for it
after an hour or so on my little laptop, so I figured out how to slice
it up into smaller pieces with the free software package RStudio
(www.rstudio.org). On the most basic level, I can take the 200 MB kml
file that's on the City's website and turn it into a simple
spreadsheet table that should be fairly straightforward to use in
things like Google Maps. The bells and whistles, in terms of
colour-coding by species, making the dot size represent tree diameter,
and overlaying Xs on the ones that are being treated for Emerald Ash
borer are things I figured out how to do in R for static PDF
documents. I'm sure you could do things like this in a web app, I just
don't know how.

As far as the data itself, my understanding of what the City published
is that it's an extract of their internal database that the forestry
department uses anyway, so I don't think they have any dedicated
resources to publishing it or have committed to any particular update
frequency. The date on the dataset is April 2013. I would certainly
like to see them update it on some sort of predictable schedule, but
my experience with open data at the moment is that you take what you
can get and don't ask too many questions. :)

The City indicates that the dataset includes only city-owned street
trees, so no private trees, and none of the city trees in parks or
other greenspace. The data they have included is the GPS co-ordinates
(which seem to line up with Google maps without any further
adjustment, at least in my neighbourhood), the species of tree,
diameter at breast height (no units given, but I'm guessing in cm),
Ward, Street Number and Name, location of the tree in relation to the
property, location of street trees that aren't associated with a civic
address (i.e. medians, etc.), whether the tree is being treated for
dutch elm disease or emerald ash borer, and the tree tag number for
trees that are being treated.

No, I'm not working with Kevin. I've only just seen his website, with
your note below. I'm certainly happy to share what I've learned with
anyone who's interested. I'm afraid I have no particular intent or
agenda with this, I really just wanted to find out what kind of tree
was kitty-corner to my house and whether the City was going to treat
it for Emerald Ash Borer. In retrospect, there were perhaps less
onerous ways to do this ;).

Cheers,

Dan

Hello Daniel Buijs,

Thanks for this.  I knew the City was brewing up various data about
the city-owned trees.  You're way ahead of me on the technology, but
the example you gave, adapting the City's raw data, looks terrific.
If this app could be made available via our web site, that would be
excellent.  Jason Kania is your contact if this requires anything
special.

Do you believe the City is committed to keeping the data current?  Any
idea what percent of its resources is going to this?

The Tree Canopy project, as I understand it, makes no distinction
between public and private trees, nor does it distinguish species.  It
is only concerned with tree canopy cover.

Are you working with Kevin O'Donnell?  (http://ottwatch.ca/)  It would
be good to find your app there.

Regards,

Erwin
cc: Board, Joseph

From: J. P. Unger [mailto:ungerjp at yahoo.com]
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2014 10:59 PM
To: Erwin Dreessen; Amy Kempster; Nicole Desroches (home); Sol
Shuster; elina.here at hotmail.com; 'Jason Kania'
Subject: Fw: CIty of Ottawa Trees dataset

Hi!
This came in...
I sent a quick reply with thanks, saying I'd forward it to the chair &
directors (cc'ing Joseph Potvin).
JP

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: Daniel Buijs <dbuijs at gmail.com>
To: contact at greenspace-alliance.ca
Cc: jpotvin at opman.ca
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2014 9:43:15 PM
Subject: CIty of Ottawa Trees dataset


Hi,

Joseph Potvin forwarded a note about your upcoming meeting where you
will discuss the Ottawa Tree Canopy project. I thought you might find
it helpful to know (if you didn't already) that the City of Ottawa has
published a dataset of City-Owned street trees, available here:

data.ottawa.ca

It's available as a kml file. I found the kml file a bit too unwieldy,
so I wrote an R script that can extract the data into a more useful
format and intelligible plot. The plot below shows the trees of the
Glebe, colour coded by species, with dot sizes representing diameter.
Trees marked with an X have been treated for Emerald Ash Borer.

If this is useful and/or of interest to you or your group, I can share
the scripts I used to extract the data and to produce the plot below.

Daniel Buijs



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Erwin Dreessen <erwin_dreessen at ncf.ca>
Date: Thu, May 15, 2014 at 5:50 PM
Subject: Greenspace Alliance AGM - Thursday, May 29, 7 p.m.
To: green-news at greenspace-alliance.ca,


Hello Members and Friends,

You are heartily invited to the Greenspace Alliance's Annual General
Meeting on Thursday, May 29, 2014, starting at 7 p.m. at the
Hintonburg Community Centre, 1064 Wellington Street West (Laurel
Room).

Our feature presentation will be on Phase 1 of the Ottawa Tree Canopy
project.  Unfortunately, Regie Alam had to cancel but the project's
co-leader, Eric Jones, will present in his stead, assisted by Iola
Price.  This is a citizen science project that is estimating the tree
canopy within the urban boundary on a ward basis, using open data and
open source tools.

The agenda is below.  Come early (6:45 p.m.) to renew your membership or apply!

A brief General Meeting will follow the AGM.

Hope to see many of you there.

Erwin