Our Village uses Davey TreeKeeper 7 to keep inventory of the trees with in the village. This program has a map that uses ESRI's shapefiles to display the locations of the trees in the TreeKeeper system. This system also has a database with addresses, X & Y coordinates, tree height, trunk diameter, condition, etc. I also maintain a tree database in ArcMap too. The problem with having two different softwares is that when someone makes a change, the data has to be entered twice. I don't get TreeKeeper changes in my GIS database unless I am notified. Then I have to manually enter them in our GIS. There are so many changes being made in TreeKeeper7 and in the GIS that there is no way to track them consistently. The two softwares have no way of talking to eachother. I just have to rely on getting information from the person who maintains the TreeKeeper inventory and hope I don't make a mistake in entering the new data and vice versa. If I add a tree to our GIS database, I have to submit a new excel file with all my changes and hope that the information does not have any errors that would override the correct information.
So, I would like to propose a toolbar or extension that would allow me to log into our Davey TreeKeeper account and be able to see what is in the TreeKeeper inventory and make changes there, and be able to have our GIS information update at the same time. It would be nice to have the two softwares talk to eachother and it would save lots of headaches and inventory confusion. It would also help with assigning X and Y coordinates to all of the trees in the inventory. Currently, we have lots of nodes with no coordinates and have worked for over a year to figure out where they belong. We need to use both programs to help maintain a better inventory. We are having an issue with the Emerald Ash Borer and to be able to use GIS to help track the bug and plan for tree removal is very important to our organization.
The TreeKeeper sofware is from Davey Resource Group at http://www.davey.com/
Michelle Mila, Village of Bloomingdale, Engineering Technician
