Lawn Measurements Made Easy | Attentive AI Blog
What is Lawn Measurement
Precise estimates for landscape maintenance projects require precise measurements of different property-level features such as lawns, parking lots, patches of lawn and trees. Of these, lawn measurements or turf measurements form a considerable number of measurements. Lawns or turfs are typically more frequently maintained and hence inaccurate measurements can build large operational overheads in the course of the contract.
Lawns and turfs
Let us understand lawn, turf and lawn measurements in greater detail. Lawns come in various peculiar shapes and sizes with a variety of grasses on them called turf. As per Encyclopaedia Britannica, turf is the surface layer of soil with its matted, dense vegetation, usually grasses grown for ornamental or recreational use. Such turf grasses include Kentucky bluegrass, creeping bentgrass, fine or red fescue, and perennial ryegrass among the popular cool-season types and Bermuda grass, Zoysia grass, and St. Augustine grass among the warm-season types.
Image credits: https://weedaway.com/blog/proper-care-grass-type/
The turfs are laid out on the lawns which are designed with respect to numerous parameters and other landscape features. Hence, lawns may not follow a specific dimensional rule. Most of the time lawn and turf measurements refer to the same thing. However, in cases where the turf comprises different grasses, the distinction between lawn and turf becomes important.
Why is lawn measurement important
Lawn measurements may be needed for pest control, irrigation, mowing, snow removal or other maintenance activities. Lawns are also accompanied by shrub beds, tree beds and other features. Each of these features might need to be measured. Also, in cases where the turfs comprise different kinds of grasses, each individual turf will have to be measured independently for all the required attributes like surface area and perimeter. Hence the measurement workflows keep getting compounded.
The problems with lawn measurements
Property measurement software enables remote lawn measurements of properties by providing drawing and drafting tools to manually trace outlines on an aerial view of the property. Even though this may sound easy, it’s actually tedious and requires a lot of effort and time to get the right trace and thus the right measurements. And given the number of such measurements done on a daily basis, it is a big bottleneck for a growing landscape business.
Apart from this inherent problem, there is also the issue of scale. Some commercial properties are vast (like golf courses, resorts, large malls). Moreover, commercial customers can also have multiple properties spread across a region. Such cases make it a time-consuming task to do measurements for commercial customers.
Finding the right solution
At Attentive AI, we reduce the property measurement time by automating the entire process. We deploy high-resolution aerial imagery and machine vision algorithms to speed up the extraction process and ensure short delivery cycles. We have created this unique offering for the landscape industry to rapidly deliver property measurements through MapX for Landscape.
How to perform lawn measurements
The traditional way of measuring lawns and turfs is through physical visits and verification. Given the number of properties a landscape business deals with on a single day, it is however not a very feasible or a cost-effective way of getting property data.
The next best option is then using property measurement software which uses aerial imagery as the canonical source of information. The biggest limitation with such software is that they also require manual intervention since a person has to sit in front of a computer, use drafting tools and draw shapes and boundaries of the lawn on the aerial imagery to get to the data. This is not only tedious but erroneous since manual errors creep in easily. Moreover, this creates large cost liability as personnel responsible for operations or sales spend long hours on an activity that is not aligned with their core responsibilities.
So, what is the best way for remote lawn measurements?
The best solution is the one that makes deriving lawn measurements in real-time without any human or tool dependencies. In other words, full automation is the key.
We have tried to create this kind of automated lawn measurement tool in MapX for Landscape. We make use of APIs and most importantly deep learning to provide a seamless property measurement experience. Our use of state-of-the-art artificial intelligent models, trained to extract the required measurements from imageries without any errors, is the highlight of our solution. It not only helps in getting the measurement values instantly, but it also ensures accuracy and ability to fetch data on any property 24×7. Moreover, there are no scaling problems as one can use MapX for Landscape all day long without any manual fatigue that usually occurs in drafting tools that need manual intervention.
How does MapX help in lawn measurements
MapX is an online platform that allows you to get on-demand property measurements. The inputs needed are the property or parcel address and the list of features that you need to measure (like lawn, parking lot, etc). MapX uses the address to uniquely identify a property. Thus you need to know the location of the property and the internet and you can get the required property measurement.
Minimum Steps
When an address is uploaded, the following automated process is triggered.
- It fetches aerial/satellite imagery through an API call.
- An AI model is run on the images to extract the required features and measurements.
- Measurements are displayed on the screen along with polygons depicting the respective features
- Users can view or download the CSV or in other requested file formats from the MapX web app.
How does MapX for Landscape look
MapX for Landscape has been designed with the purpose of easing property measurements and thus has a user-friendly interface with minimum steps required to get your measurements instantly.
Landscape Features on your fingertips
Depending on the landscaping services required in a property, different features can be measured. It is possible to get the following features on-demand through MapX.
- Parcel boundary
- Turf
- Lawn
- Beds
- Tree rings
- Hard and soft edges
- Parking Lots
- Sidewalk
- Driveways and drive-lanes
- Building footprints
- Tree and shrub beds
- Tree inventory
- Palm Tree
- Hedges
- Curb lines
- Parking Garages
- Gravel
- Docks
- Any other custom feature as specified by the user
How to use MapX for Landscape
Getting MapX for Landscape is very simple.
- Login to MapX for Landscape using credentials provided to you by us.
- Enter the parcel address of the property of interest.
- Select lawn measurement parameters.
- See the results on the screen or download them for further usage
Contact us to get MapX for Landscape
Contact us to see a demo of MapX for Landscape. If you like it, we will provide you with a very reasonable and transparent quote as per your business case. Soon after we will send you login credentials and you will be ready to access instantaneous data and grow your business, operation teams or confidently pitch to clients. Time is precious, do not keep your clients waiting.
Originally published at https://blog.attentive.ai on March 16, 2020.
