mapFeeder™: Urban Forestry

Tree Trust was created in 1976 to address two problems in Minneapolis Twin Cities communities: devastation of the urban tree canopy due to Dutch elm disease and the high unemployment and poverty rates for youth and adults. They began combating these issues by providing out-of-work individuals with training and paid jobs reforesting the community.

They have since expanded to offer integrated employment training, community forestry and have added a for-profit division providing forestry and landscaping services to the commercial sector.

In 2010 Tree Trust asked Flat Rock Geographics to help them solve an all to common problem.  Their “homegrown” Microsoft Access project tracking application could no longer scale to fit their growing needs and increasing number of staff grew.  Using mapFeeder™, we created a project tracking application allowing the to know where all their projects, staff and equipment are at any time.  Daily work orders reports are created for project managers, including a map of all their projects for the day.  Additional forms and reports were added for tracking vehicle and equipment maintenance, entering staff timesheets and generating billing information for the accounting department.

In the fall of 2011, we will be creating another mapFeeder™ application to manage their entire tree inventory program.