In just a few days Quantum Spatial will land in Fort Worth, Texas for the International Society of Arboriculture Conference and Trade Show (ISA). We will be at booth number 1302 and sending an elite delegation of Quantum Spatial business development professionals: Jacob Hall, Tarin Lewis, and myself, Logan McConnell.
What is a big geospatial data and analytics company doing at the ISA?
Let me explain, as this is not an uncommon question for arborists. Quantum Spatial is known within the electric and gas utility industry for providing bleeding edge, programmatic solutions of scale for vegetation management. First, we acquire imagery and 3D data that provides spatial and proximity information over a given corridor or network. Next, we analyze the resulting data sets for vegetation clearance, vegetation health, and specific species. Then, we answer the underlying questions utilities have about their assets in relation to the vegetation around it. For example:
- How many of my 230kV transmission line spans have standing, but dead, Ponderosa Pine trees nearby that are tall enough to strike the wires?
- What is the prevalence of Emerald Ash Borer infestation and Ash health decline in a given municipality?
- How has drought affected the health of the Oak trees near my distribution circuits?
After Quantum Spatial has completed a quantified analysis, we turn the results into action through mobile software and workforce management solutions. For example, Quantum Spatial enables arborists to completely transition from paper based records to iPads that indicate work assignments with spatial context for vegetation mitigation missions. All work orders are automatically synced to office records and a single source of truth is established between the office and the field.
Focusing more specifically on technological solutions, one of our newest and most innovative offerings for arborists is using our advanced sensory technology to identify trees and other vegetation down to the species. Without the need to visit each individual tree, we are able to determine vegetation genus and species using custom-built hyperspectral imaging sensors.
Based on the comparison of the remotely sensed tree species data to extensive field verification, we have found that Quantum Spatial’s methods accurately identify species 84% of the time. Arborists could conduct tree inventories for entire cities or thousands of miles of Right-of-Way in a few weeks’ time; effectively transitioning from a field-based inventory to a virtualized one. Of course “boots on the ground” are needed for accuracy checks and to provide baseline data for machine learning algorithms, but efficiency is increased by several orders of magnitude.
We hope you have the chance to stop by Quantum Spatial’s booth 1302 to dive deeper into how our remote vegetation species identification (or other solutions) can solve problems of scale and efficiency for your organization.