Tree Hazard Assessments at University Putra Malaysia Using GIS-Based UPM-MUTIS Decision Support System

Urban forest can be defined as art, science and technology of managing trees and forest resources that grow within a city, town or a suburb. It provides benefits in the form of green landscape, storm water management, carbon storage which lead to human heath. Regardless, they are also potentially cause hazardous to their surroundings. Hence, there is a need to evaluate urban trees whether they are hazardous or not. These can be prevented by developing a tree information system which can determine hazardous trees as well as function as trees‟ coordinates‟ locator information storage. It also will act as decision support tool for the management. Hazard rating assessment in the context of urban trees is the evaluation of the defect severity of trees and how likely they are to fail as well as how severe in terms of damage that they could cause to their surroundings. In this study, roadside trees hazard rating was assessed automatically by a Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) in customized ArcMapTM application using, known as Universiti Putra Malaysia-Malaysian Urban Trees Information System (UPM MUTIS), developed by the Faculty of Forestry, UPM. The capabilities of UPM-MUTIS ver. 1.0 in determining hazard rating are also assessed. The study area covered part of UPM‟s academic zone. Result revealed that out of 909 trees assessed, A total of 840 trees (92.4%) were categorized as „Low‟ hazard rating, 67 trees (7.4%) as „Medium‟ hazard rating and no trees with „High‟ and „Severe‟ hazard rating. The accuracy on the tree counting in the study area is 95.15%. UPM-MUTIS should be further developed into a web-based system which can be accessed by all potential users. UPM-MUTIS should be further tested by local municipal council and arborists for practicality. Further studies should be done on UPM-MUTIS to enable life long monitoring of tree health and tree risk status that could change over tim

Automated hazard rating assessment of roadside trees using MUTIS ver 1.0

Streptococcosis in cultured fishes has been reported to cause severe economic losses to the aquaculture industry worldwide. Lancefield group B Streptococcus agalactiae has been recognised as the main pathogen in cultured tilapia. This review discusses the current scenario and risk factors of streptococcosis in tilapia and suggests the control and prevention measures for this disease. The preventive measures focus on combined aspects of selecting farm location, applying good aquaculture farm practices, utilization of antibiotics and proper vaccination programme. A combination of all these measures will perhaps be the key to improve the health of cultured tilapia and prevent the infection by S. agalactiae, which in turn will increase the economic profit of tilapia farm operators

Hazard-rating assessment of roadside trees at UPM using geospatial tool.

Roadside trees provide benefits in the form of green landscape, human health, storm-water management, carbon storage and etc. However, they are potentially hazardous to their surroundings. Hence, there is a need to evaluate these trees as to whether they are hazardous or not. Hazard-rating assessment in the context of urban trees is the evaluation of the hazard of trees and how likely they are to fail as well as how severe in terms of damage that they could cause to their surroundings. In this study, roadside trees hazard rating was assessed automatically using a customised ArcMap TM application using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), known as UPM-Malaysian Urban Trees Information System (UPM-MUTIS), developed by Faculty of Forestry, UPM. The study is to determine the capabilities of UPM-MUTIS in generating hazard-rating assessment. The study area covered part of UPM’s academic zone. Result depicted that out of 909 trees assessed, 99.8% (907 trees) were categorised as ‘Medium’ hazard rating and no trees with ‘Low’, ‘High’, and ‘Severe’ hazard rating. Upon deriving hazard-rating assessment, abatement activities were subsequently proposed in which was mainly various degrees and types of pruning. This paper details out the hazard-rating assessment process of roadside trees and the succeeding abatement activities proposed at the study site