Significant Trees Project
We love trees. Especially big, old, stunning trees in our local area. Therefore, we were drawn to using the City of Boroondara's significant tree list as the inspiration for our latest project: to demonstrate the value data visualisation can add to existing data.
In this project we took the list of significant trees in Boroondara, which is available as a PDF on the council website, geo-encoded the locations and created an interactive map. Consequently, this rich data set is now much more accessible and useful.
We hope that by turning this simple list into an interactive, visual experience, local residents and visitors to the area will become much more aware of the beautiful, significant trees that might be just around the corner.
How to Use
On the map above, significant trees have been displayed as green dots. You can click and drag and zoom in and out to explore where the trees are.
Clicking on a green dot displays an information bubble about the tree. Within the bubble is the full name and address of the tree, plus a link that will take you to a separate page with more detailed information and photos. You can also add your own comments about the tree if you have some thoughts you'd like to share.
Future plans
The significant tree list represents a fraction of the impressive trees in Boroondara. Potentially, more trees could be represented, such as those included in the inventory of indigenous flora and fauna. As the number of trees grows we could introduce filters to show natives vs exotics, or to show all eucalypts or all elms, for example. We could show the trees with historical significance, such as having been planted by an important dignitary, or show the trees that are genuine remnants from pre-European settlement times.
So much data is available in our local council, but accessing it and making sense of it often requires a good deal of effort. Through visualisation, this data, be it lists of trees, community events or a snapshot of council spending, can be made much more accessible and valuable to the public.
For more information on this project read our blog or to discuss how a similar project could be developed for your council, please contact the team at Flink Labs.
