Tree Folio

Tree Folio is one of the longest-running research projects that the Urban Tech Hub has supported since its founding four years ago. Tree Folio is a suite of tools to better understand and quantify the local impact of urban trees. The tools extract 3d models of every tree in NYC from publicly available, high-resolution LiDAR scans, simulates their local shading environments, and quantifies the amount and quality of shade they provide.

The success and impact of this project has demonstrated the potential of citywide LiDAR surveys and the research has filled critical knowledge gaps essential for maintaining and expanding urban tree canopies. The influence of the project is significant, and will help support strategies to improve tree health and growth, enhance the impact of new plantings, and align canopy expansion with public priorities and environmental justice goals. The tools developed to date have the potential to transform urban forestry in smaller cities and towns, which often lack the resources for comprehensive canopy management.

Cities largely rely on costly, infrequent data sources methods for measuring their urban canopies. As a result, the data to inform canopy management and improvement is often of low quality, low resolution, and out of date, harming a cities abilities to respond to the varied and current needs of their communities. Maximizing the impact of trees and leveraging new data sources is critical to understand and solve for the variable vulnerabilities of cities due to climate change.

These efforts revolutionized urban forestry by addressing key gaps in data and modeling. The team combined expertise from spatial design perspectives, computer vision, cloud computing, urban design, and urban data analysis to create a multidisciplinary solution. By integrating these perspectives with public data, the project can ultimately provide cities of all sizes with tools to develop more effective and equitable urban canopies.

Tree Folio NYC is a research project by the Design Across Scales Lab at Cornell AAP, funded and developed in collaboration with the Urban Tech Hub