QR codes for landscape asset management – HisTREE.net

After writing about ICON and its use of QR codes for asset management in January, I have been contacted by Edmonton, Canada-based Art Maat, who runs two businesses deploying QR codes.

HisTREE.net – as the name implies – is used by suppliers and by landscape, urban forest and parks managers to log details of trees and other plants, plus parks furniture and other ‘hard’ assets (in a video he call it “a Facebook for trees“!). ArcSSET.net is a similar service more focused on mobile asset management in the oil and gas, construction and utilities sectors, and also includes use of RFID technology as well as QR codes.

Art writes:

We have developed a web based asset management product using QR technology for the unique identification and ongoing management of assets in the green, construction, utility and municipal sectors.

We are very near our launch of a full function iOS app as the primary means of asset interaction and mobile data management for literally any asset that requires mobile data collection and realtime retrieval of asset attributes. This includes  task event recording, inspections, GPS locations and document retrieval, web based interaction and reporting, and the ability to share asset data across several users or clients. Currently we are using dedicated Intermec 2D barcode scanners.

We think and have found that what we have created is very ground breaking and innovative in the world of mobile asset management. …

Our product is 100 % designed to accommodate any existing data collection process. This is accomplished by the fact that we have no preexisting menu lists and data management flows.  Using  web based wizards we build and match any data collection process using our web based cloud data base “engine”. …

Art’s businesses aim to simplify data capture, recording and viewing, and offer integration with existing GIS systems, including tools from Autodesk, Bentley, Intergraph, plus Google Earth/Map (below) and OpenStreetMap. The software is delivered on a Software-as-a-Service basis (Art also describes it as Software as a Secure Service), allowing users to interrogate the database through any web-enabled device, including smartphones and tablets.