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| Hue is known as Vietnam’s “green city" |
Health records for urban trees
In response to Vietnam Tree Planting Day (January 11) and in implementation of the Government Decree No. 258/2025/ND-CP on the management of urban park trees, the People’s Committee of Hue City recently organized a tree-planting campaign in Kim Long Ward. Beyond planting new trees, the city simultaneously rolled out the digitalization of urban greenery - an important step toward building a smart city.
At the event, task teams were assigned to specific streets to carry out tree digitalization following a standardized process: identifying each tree’s location on a digital map, recording on-site images, and updating technical details such as species, trunk and canopy size, growth condition, signs of pests or disease, and potential risks to infrastructure or traffic safety. Each participant digitalized at least 20 trees, with all data synchronized into a centralized management system. This approach lays the groundwork for a new model in which every tree has a complete profile, history, and long-term monitoring data.
The urban tree management system was researched and developed by Hue City’s Center of Information Technology (HueCIT) at the request of the construction sector and relevant professional units. The system allows trees to be displayed visually by road, area, species, current condition, and maintenance history. It has now been applied at the City Green Parks Center, Hue Monuments Conservation Center, and several localities, gradually replacing previous manual management methods.
Following digitalization, tree data are reviewed, standardized, and professionally verified through coordination between HueCIT and the City Green Parks Center. This process forms a health-record database for each tree, enabling managers to proactively plan care, pruning, and replacement, while promptly identifying trees at risk of falling, especially during the storm season.
The big data challenge
According to Nguyen Phuoc Gia Huy from HueCIT’s Design and Production Consulting Division, in the recent phase, more than 1,400 trees were digitalized in areas north of the Huong River. Previously, over 12,000 trees south of the river had already been digitalized by the City Green Parks Center, out of a total of more than 67,000 urban trees under its management.
In fact, since 2021, HueCIT and the City Green Parks Center have developed a web-based tree management platform, followed by a mobile application in 2023. The transition from paper maps and logbooks to digital platforms has eased management workloads, but it has also brought new challenges.
“The biggest difficulties lie in both technical operations and technology. On many streets, trees are planted very close together. Accurately pinpointing each tree, distinguishing nearby objects, and handling such a large volume of data are challenges we have had to carefully address,” Huy said.
To overcome these issues, HueCIT adopted modern mapping technology from a leading global software provider, taking advantage of Hue’s licensed base-map data. At the same time, the Center optimized data structures and gradually introduced artificial intelligence (AI) to support tree identification, analysis, and data processing.
AI is also being studied for automatically generating maintenance schedules based on data such as species, age, and growth condition. With tens of thousands of trees, manually planning annual maintenance places a heavy burden on technical staff. Once the data become sufficiently large and standardized, the system can propose pruning, monitoring, and conservation plans in a more scientific manner.
The application also opens a channel for public participation. By logging in via VNeID or Hue-S, residents can help digitalize trees and report fallen trees or pest damage during storm seasons. The information is then reviewed by the City Green Parks Center before being officially updated.
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| Urban trees are geolocated on the map within the green space and landscape management application |
A key piece of the smart city puzzle
Le Vinh Chien, Director of HueCIT, said that tree digitalization is not a standalone application, but an essential component of Hue’s smart city framework.
“Only when data are available, can we answer core management questions: where trees are located, how they grow, when they need pruning, and when replacement is necessary. The entire tree care process will be digitalized, making management far more accurate and efficient than traditional manual methods,” Chien said.
From having to take photos, do the marking and input data through various steps, in the near future, the application will integrate AI to automatically identify trees from images, determine coordinates, and retrieve the correct tree ID from the database. By simply scanning a code or photographing a tagged tree, the full tree profile will instantly appear on screen.
According to Le Cong Dien, Deputy Director of the city’s Department of Construction, the digitalization of urban trees not only modernizes infrastructure management but also improves the quality of green spaces, enhances the living environment, and supports the goal of developing Hue into a green, smart city.
From the perspective of the managing unit, Ngo Ngoc Dung, who is in charge of urban greenery at the City Green Parks Center, expects the application to become increasingly intelligent. Based on input data, the system can automatically compile statistics on tree distribution by road and species, issue maintenance reminders, and flag trees requiring special monitoring or conservation.