CROSS-PLATFORM APPLICATION FOR URBAN AFFORESTATION

Abstract

The urban forest includes trees planted on sidewalks, parks, squares, gardens, backyards, parking lots, cemeteries and urban forests, which is directly linked to the quality of life of the population, as it has numerous advantages such as: reduction of air pollution, shading, anti-stress paper, carbon sequestration and storage, etc. In this context, the objective of this research was to develop a multiplatform application, which can assist the managers of the Municipal Department of the Environment of Castanhal, directly responsible for the planning, follow-up and monitoring of urban afforestation. The application called UrbanTree, was developed on the no-code platform FluterFlow, which allows you to create applications for Android, IOS, and web browser operating systems. The Application was tested in partnership with the Municipal Department of the Environment (SEMMA) of the municipality of Castanhal/PA, where a sampling of the trees that make up the space of Praça do Estrela and Avenida Barão do Rio Branco was carried out. During the test, dendrometric data were collected, such as total height, height of the first fork, PAC, etc.; as well as phytosanitary data such as trunk inclination, crown quality, presence of hemiparasites, among others, which are essential for a good analysis of urban trees, such information collected is categorized into: location, morphology and photographic images of the species. During the usability of the application, the performance of the application was evaluated in terms of registration time, efficiency in data collection and ease of use compared to traditional collection models. In all, 131 trees were inventoried, of which 73 individuals were evaluated as excellent, 49 presented good condition and only 8 individuals were certified as very bad. Inventorying all the trees with the UrbanTree took 4 hours and 9 minutes, while with the field sheet it took 9 hours and 46 minutes, a saving of 53% in total work time. The partnership with SEMMA - Castanhal and the practical application of UrbanTree tends to represent a significant advance in the modernization of urban tree management processes, providing an effective tool that meets the practical needs of public entities, significantly reducing the time needed to transcribe the data collected, as this data can be automatically directed to the Google Sheets spreadsheet,  which reduces the time for data analysis.