A few weeks ago I was having a discussion with colleagues about durians. And the topic went on to picking durians directly from trees. I mentioned that now the National Parks Board (NParks) have this amazing website for you to identify all type of trees in Singapore. It has a vast repository of 2 million trees in there. I did a quick search on my mobile phone on ‘durian’ and the trees immediately appear on the map.
NParks is probably one of the last organization you will think about on digitalization. But on today’s Straits Times, there is an article on NParks digitalization masterplan. The fabulous overview on the digitalization efforts by NParks below is extracted from the Straits Times (dated 19 July 2018)
NParks Digitalization Masterplan
The article summarize an important issue that is faced by NParks frequently – trees collapsing due to a storm or out of the blue. Cars have been crashed in the past. People were also injured due to falling trees. A new technology introduced above is the Inclinometer which will help the NParks staff monitor the inclination of the tree. It’s difficult to check visually. Technology definitely will help in monitoring it.
Another great technology they have mentioned is the use of Drones to inspect trees. The staff will not need to get a crane truck to visually check on the trees foilage, or attempt to climb up the trees.
2 million trees is quite a huge inventory NParks have on their hands. Technology will definitely help to make the trees safer and easier to manage.