Quantified Trees

What is it about?

Urban trees are increasingly suffering from the consequences of climate change and the extreme weather of an urban environment, where they have limited access to soil. Due to their slow genetic adaptation as a reaction to environmental changes, they are particularly affected by increasingly frequent drought periods and temperature extremes. The consequential damage of the increasing drought periods of the ongoing climate change can already be seen in Berlin, as many city trees already have to be pruned or cut down due to massive deadwood development.

With the project „Quantified Trees" (QTrees for short), the consortium has developed solutions to counteract tree deaths long term by developing a prediction model supported by artificial intelligence (AI) that, using a wide range of data, identifies city trees at acute risk of drought at an early stage. The project has ended as of September 2023. The results of the project are an AI prediction model and two open-source web applications for the civil society and the Berlin administration.

The app Baumblick is an application for interested Berlin citizens to provide an insight and outlook into the condition and water supply of city trees, to create awareness around the topic of tree preservation and to invite them to get involved. In addition, an expert dashboard was developed exclusively for the Berlin administration, which acts as a decision-making tool for optimising the irrigation of city trees. 

Open source code for Baumblick: https://github.com/technologiestiftung/baumblick-frontend
Open source code for expert dashboard: https://github.com/technologiestiftung/superset-qtrees

Who is participating?

Together with the Birds on Mars, an AI agency based in Berlin, the Technology Foundation Berlin successfully applied for funding for measures to adapt to climate change. QTrees was thus part of the German Strategy for Adaptation to Climate Change (DAS) and was funded by the Federal Ministry for the Environment.

In the project, the consortium was primarily responsible for developing the prediction model, exploring the data and developing the software. The project partner, Straßen- und Grünflächenamt Berlin Mitte, as well as the associated project partners, Straßen- und Grünflächenamt Berlin Neukölln, the service providers for sensors and tree irrigation services Arbor Revital and im Norden GmbH, were involved during the development phase in workshops and also continuously helping with relevant technical expertise to promote the integration into internal processes and support networking with other stakeholders in the field.