In our team we have an ISA Master Arborist, a Data Scientist and an ISA Arborist. While the Arborist determines what needs to be observed, assessed, and prescribed. Data and software design determine how those observations are stored, validated, transformed, mapped, and reported.

One of the practical challenges in tree risk assessment is that species failure profile information is real, useful, and widely referenced, but it is not available in one complete, authoritative source. Assessors often carry this information through experience. Over time, they develop a sense of which species are associated with certain branch habits, structural issues, storm responses, or recurring failure patterns.

We do environmental monitoring with a specialization in trees and tree inventories, and our clients are paying for skill and experience applied in the field. The software has to support that work instead of competing with it.

In the field, a slow network or long-running request can leave the user in an ambiguous state. A recording upload may have been accepted even though the phone never got a clean response. A submit action may still be processing even though the request appeared to stall. In those cases, the question is not whether the client can send data. The question is whether the user can tell what actually happened.

Tree risk assessments don’t happen at a desk. They happen outside. In the rain. On uneven ground. Sometimes wearing gloves. Typing notes into a phone or navigating dropdown-heavy forms isn’t just annoying — it slows the work down and breaks focus. Paper notes aren’t much better when it’s wet or windy.