Google’s New AI Platform Will Help Cities Plant Trees Smartly To Limit Carbon Emissions

Reuters

And now, to appropriately plant trees Google has unveiled its Tree Canopy Lab that harnesses the power of AI an aerial imagery to help people find the right spot to plant a tree. Tree Canopy Lab is a part of the Environmental Insights Explorer Platform which allows cities to easily measure, plan and limit carbon emissions and pollution.

Google has applied a state-of-the-art tree-detection AI that looks for images and analyses the presence of trees, post which, it creates a map to show the density of tree cover, to help pick appropriate spots for planting trees. It collected data with the help of ‘aerial imagery collected from planes during the spring, summer and fall seasons, as well as Google AI and Google Earth Engine’s data analysis capabilities’. The system can also identify residential zones and areas where the floor could get hot and would benefit from a higher canopy coverage. 

For now, this system is currently active in the areas of Los Angeles and will be rolled out to more regions in the coming months.

Google

Google said in a statement, “With the Tree Canopy Lab, you can see Los Angeles’s trees with the local contexts, like what percentage of a neighbourhood has a leafy cover, an area’s population density, what areas are vulnerable to extreme heat, and which neighbourhood councils can help get new roots in the ground.”

It added, “With Tree Canopy Lab we’ve found that more than 50 per cent of Angelenos live in areas with less than 10 per cent tree canopy coverage and 44 per cent of Angelenos live in areas with extreme heat risk.”