In the era of climate change, trees play a crucial role in urban areas by adding adaptive values. However, the public often overlooks the well-being of these vital allies. A stark example is the storm in Amsterdam in 2020, which uprooted over 500 trees due to poor living conditions, limited space, and declined biodiversity. Besides, studies also show that city trees have higher mortality rates than their forest or rural counterparts.
Happy Tree Sensor aims to retain the benefits of trees by enhancing public awareness and engagement. A group of 5 students from MADE program are developing methods to measure tree happiness using sensors and communicate it to the public, building on the Living Lab 2022 results.
With the project, we explored the answers for three questions: How can we harness the sensing technology and data science to promote the welfare and vitality of trees in urban areas? What kind of interactions can we apply to make people curious and caring about trees in the city? How can we make citizens and different sectors in the city thrive with the urban trees?
The final product contains three parts: the sensor, physical interaction, and dashboard parts. Every part serves different functions and users while interconnecting with each other. We believe that the happiness of trees is inherently intertwined with human happiness, a difference could be made if we relook at our trees from the perspective of happiness.
Draw a happy tree activity.
About MADE:
The Master program Metropolitan Analysis, Design and Engineering (MSc MADE) focuses on challenges of sustainability and quality of life in cities and metropolitan regions in the fast-urbanizing world. It is jointly held by TU Delft, WUR and AMS institute.
About living lab method:
The method focusses on developing, creating, and testing solutions for real challenges and cases with multiple stakeholders in the context of the urban environment. Happy Tree is one of the ongoing projects of the living lab course. Last year, Happy Tree Monitor researched on over 170 variables that contribute to trees’ happiness.
Contact: happytrees@ams-institute.org