GeoCam and Cal Poly Partner to Democratize Urban Tree Mapping with AI-Driven Reality Capture Technology

In partnership with California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) and led by Associate Professor Andrew Fricker along with Esri, the world’s leading Geographic Information System (GIS) company, GeoCam is employing its AI-powered reality capture platform to shape the future of urban forestry. The aim of this innovative collaboration is to deliver an open, accurate, and scalable solution to map and track street trees, making critical environmental data accessible to cities, towns, and municipalities of all sizes.

The Challenge – Tracking Trees with Outdated Tools

Urban trees offer a wide range of benefits: cleaner air, cooler temperatures, and improved public health outcomes. But the traditional methods for measuring and cataloging trees are slow, expensive, and often limited to the affluent neighborhoods that can afford them. Underserved communities, where tree planting could have the greatest impact, are frequently overlooked.

To tackle this inequity, Professor Fricker and GeoCam set out to create an affordable, scalable, and accurate tree inventory system that could empower cities of any size to better manage their urban forests.

The Solution – A Robust Reality Capture Collaboration

By combining GeoCam’s AI-driven reality capture system with Professor Fricker’s expertise in ecology, the team is building a scalable pipeline for tree detection and classification. Key components include:

• Reality Capture: The GeoCam 360 camera is used to collect massive datasets across diverse urban environments in California.

• Expert Labeling: Cal Poly students and professional arborists label images, creating a high-quality dataset.

• AI-Powered Detection: Deep learning algorithms trained on over 100,000 labeled trees identify and map tree locations, species, and canopy details.

• Open Source Tree Detector: The team is building a model that municipalities can deploy with minimal cost, no professional survey crews required.

• Unsupervised Pre-Processing: Similar-looking trees are grouped to accelerate expert validation and streamline model training.

“Our goal is simple,” said Professor Fricker. “Can we simplify and therefore democratize the capture and analysis of urban tree inventories so that even communities like Bakersfield, that have never had a census, can map and manage their urban forests?”

The Impact – Smart and Actionable Data

• Flexible Data Collection: GeoCam’s capture system can operate from cars, bikes, and even walking routes, which is ideal for gathering data from streets, parks, and alleys.

• Open Access: The open-source platform allows cities, researchers, and nonprofits to access tree data tools without licensing fees.

• Equitable Outcomes: Underserved communities can begin tree inventories to support climate resilience, health improvements, and air quality planning.

• Smarter Planning: Urban foresters and city planners get actionable data on tree species, canopy coverage, and general health, improving resource allocation and long-term design.

The Future – Expanding the Roots

The team is continuously refining its models and expanding its imagery coverage to include more climate zones. Upcoming project tasks include publishing accuracy metrics for trunk diameter and canopy estimation, as well as releasing an open-access dataset and labeling tool for global use.

“Trees are complex, they overlap, change over time, and vary widely,” says Myles Sutherland, CEO, GeoCam. “But if we can crack the urban forestry challenge, I truly believe that the broader applications for reality capture are limitless. To enable this, we’re working with Dr. Fricker on improving segmentation and detection models, fine-tuning them with expert labeling from arborists at the Urban Tree Institute. We’re excited to see where this goes and are actively seeking to expand the collaboration. Dr. Fricker, the Urban Tree Institute, and I would love to connect with other researchers, nonprofits, utilities, and arborists who want to help advance this science.”

This pioneering partnership between GeoCam and Cal Poly reimagines how cities can engage with their green infrastructure. By blending ecological expertise, cutting-edge AI, and community collaboration, the team is creating an urban forestry solution that’s open, equitable, and built to scale.