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

Wed May 21 02:03:16 CEST 2014

Hi Joseph,

I am a botanist at Agriculture Canada, and also a reasonably experienced 
R user. I am very interested in this project, and would be happy to 
contribute a either a plant biologist, an R coder or both.

At present I am in the field, and won't be back to Ottawa until the 
beginning of June.

Best,

Tyler

On 17/05/14 06:39 PM, Joseph Potvin wrote:
> 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
>
>
> On 2014-05-17, at 3:15 PM, Erwin Dreessen wrote:
>
> 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
>
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