Tanvi Harkare – Looking Outwards – 01

A computational project that I found interesting is Treepedia, an interactive map that shows you the green canopy areas created by trees and other greenery in many cities around the world. It was created by the Senseable City Lab at MIT, consisting of 5 individuals, and is completely open-source. They have also partnered with World Economic Forum and Global Shapers Community to help bring awareness for their project. For this map to work, the Senseable City Lab created “Green View Index”, which uses Google Street Views instead of satellite images to compare green canopy coverage in different cities. Their hope is to bring a better understanding of all the climate issues Earth is going through currently, such as global warming and air pollution. Additionally, users along with local authorities will hopefully help act and bring more green landscape into major cities. Users can also compare cities side by side and see how much green canopy space they have versus another city. Although it is not available in Pittsburgh yet, some cities that are currently available include Los Angeles, Boston, NY, plus 24 other major cities. In the future, the Senseable City Lab wants to expand their map to cover more places across the globe.

I find this project interesting because of the way that they approach the issue of not having enough trees in cities to help fight environmental issues. It’s something different that I personally haven’t seen anywhere else before; an easy to understand map that conveys all the information it needs to. One of my favorite aspects of the project are the comparisons between all the different cities. This seems like a very efficient way for cities to know how well their initiatives to create more green canopy spaces are working, if any further action was to be taken. The more cities that are represented on this interactive map, I believe the more successful this project will be in the future.

Visit the Treepedia website here.