I just ran Canopy for my community. As a first time user I have the following suggestions:
- To make classification more efficient, make all classes viewable and clickable without having to click the dropdown arrow. Maybe provide buttons in the main window. Otherwise, inform users to choose what they think will be the most common cover type (e.g. grass) as the first class they define. It will cut down on the number of times you have to select the dropdown menu.
- Sometimes the map jumped back to an old location or didn't move to the location of the new point.
- Provide more direction for step 3, such as how to classify the shadow of a tree or building. May not be intuitive to everyone.
- Provide a link to Bing maps as another option for viewing the landscape and verifying a cover class. The bird's eye view is very useful for this.
-Be more clear on the recommended standard error to aim for. My WI DNR colleagues told me 2% was reasonable.
-Provide a Print button for printing the cover report. [/list]
iTree Canopy Suggestions
Moderators: i-Tree Support, i-Tree Team
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xtraspatial
- Posts: 3
- Joined: Thu Aug 30, 2012 12:56 pm
Crowdsourcing for Canopy
Currently, there doesn't seem to be a way to merge multiple *.dat files, even if they use the same shapefile and classification schema. This makes crowdsourcing for large numbers of points a tedious process of sharing the project's DAT file as if it were the only copy of a library book: only one person can be appending records to it at any given time.
I know I can append the exported records (in CSV format), but there isn't an import function for CSV files the way there is for the all-inclusive DAT file.
I'm proposing a MERGE DAT utility that would check the shapefile "chunk" of the DAT files to be sure they are the same, as well as a classification consistency check to make sure that the merged files use the same classification schema. Only then would the sequence numbers for the merged files be offset to provide a unique sequence number for each record. In this manner, I'd be able to distribute a single starter DAT file to my 20 or so volunteers, and they could return their 100-record DAT file to me for merging. This seems like it would be a better workflow than to pass the growing DAT file from one volunteer to another sequentially.
I know I can append the exported records (in CSV format), but there isn't an import function for CSV files the way there is for the all-inclusive DAT file.
I'm proposing a MERGE DAT utility that would check the shapefile "chunk" of the DAT files to be sure they are the same, as well as a classification consistency check to make sure that the merged files use the same classification schema. Only then would the sequence numbers for the merged files be offset to provide a unique sequence number for each record. In this manner, I'd be able to distribute a single starter DAT file to my 20 or so volunteers, and they could return their 100-record DAT file to me for merging. This seems like it would be a better workflow than to pass the growing DAT file from one volunteer to another sequentially.