Tree Map is an application for urban tree mapping. It helps local communities and enthusiasts collect and publish data about trees and plants around them. The application has a database of trees, their coordinates, current state, photos, and changes of that data over time. The data can be used for various purposes, such as urban planning, environmental studies, recreational, and more.
The application is heavily inspired by the New York City Street Tree Map (870k trees), which is a great example of how tree mapping can be done, and Treezilla (1M trees), which is a similar project in the UK. There might be other similar projects, but none that you can run easily and use in your own city, as far as I know.
About - Screenshots - API - TODO - Features - Demo
The application is fully working an used by the Yerevan Tree Map project, although some features are still being developed, see Feature Map. The application is packaged in a Docker container and can be quickly deployed on any server.
The backend is a REST API written in Rust, using the Actix web framework. The database is SQLite, used via async-sqlite. The API documentation can be found in the wiki. Rust is chosen for the backend to make it fast and safe, being able to handle a lot of requests in tiny environments.
The frontend is written in TypeScript, using the Svelte framework. The map is provided by Leaflet. The frontend is a Progressive Web App, which means it will be installable on a mobile device and used offline one day.
The project uses the monorepo approach to keep all the code in one place, for simplicity. The backend and the frontend are in separate directories.
You can run the app locally using a pre-composed Docker image. You will need Docker installed on your machine. The command line is:
$ docker run -p 8000:8000 -v $PWD/var:/app/var ghcr.io/umonkey/treemap:latest
With this command you'll be running the application, both backend and frontend, on port localhost:8000.
The SQLite database will be stored in ./var directory, and should persist container restarts.
The database will be created automatically on the first run.
To run a public service, this would need to be hidden behind a CDN.
(The service is not yet ready for public use.)
Please see the installation instructions for more details.
There is a fully working public installation at Yerevan Tree Map.
If you are an UI/UX designer, we would love some feedback on how to improve the user experience. The focus should be on people doing the mapping work in the fields: adding new trees, measuring existing ones, and so on.
If you are into machine learning and computer vision, we would love some help on automating the process of initial mapping. Manually adding trees is the most time consuming thing so far. We would like to use video records of streets from a car mounted camera, to automatically detect trees and add them to the OSM map. We have a ticket for this, please join.
I love growing trees and crowdmapping. I always wanted to have a map of all the trees in my city, so that when it's time to collect seeds for the next season, I know exactly where to go. Or to check how a rare species feels in our climate. I could not find any such map, so I decided to make one myself.
I also love programming. So I decided to make the app myself, as a pet project. I chose Rust for the backend, because it's a language I want to learn better. I chose TypeScript for the frontend, because it's a language I already know well, and I like it.