PlotSafe

collecting forest inventory data with fast and easy data entry

Field Inventory Data Collector

Plotsafe is a software tool for collecting forest inventory data.  It can be used for a range of forest surveys from a forest inventory survival survey to a quality control assessment.

Widely used across the forest industry in New Zealand, Australia and South America, it is available in both English and Spanish

Training courses, online user support and demo licences are available.  

Functions of PlotSafe

Plotsafe is flexible and customisable making it user-friendly for a range of inventory data collection from pre-harvest inventory, to planting quality control.

Data collection is fully compatible with YTGen Forest yield analysis software and across a range of windows mobiles, desktops and tablets.

Customisable Platform

It’s customisable platform allows you to add or remove data entry fields at any level to collect additional information such as health and safety/hazard awareness checks, wildlife information, or additional carbon biomass data, thus enabling it to travel with the data and reduce field paper work

Each datafile begins with relational data structure of strata, plots, trees and stems.

More Functions
  • User defined HOT-KEYS to speed data collection
  • Fully usable without touch screen (during wet weather)
  • Auto-save feature
  • User defined default file locations
  • Automatic plotsize adjustment for slope
  • Export data to CSV, XML or YTF (YTGEN population files) files
  • Small file size
  • Compatibility – with Windows and Windows mobile tested, Windows 7, 8, 10 desk top PC’s and tablets and Windows mobile CE 5, 6 and 6.5 embedded devices
Additional Features
  • Data entry validation options include pick-lists, numeric ranges, numeric or text defined fields, choose which fields are required, read only or hidden
  • Collect single feature classifications like MARVL
  • Collect over-lapped feature classifications at the stem level, allowing use of cruising dictionary standards like RAD05
  • Allows for primary or secondary plot-types and circular, square, point sweep, line sweep, strip or no size plot shapes.
  • Merge multiple files at the plot or tree level
  • User-definable program limits and error checking,  Errors and warnings are inherited to parent objects and view-able to the user in a drill-down style for easy file checking from the top level down.
  • Time stamps for all data collected
  • User controls are similar to DATAPLUS, another data collection product provided by Interpine to the industry.

Out in Industry

Edge Trees – An Important Consideration for Forest Inventory

When comparing edge trees with "normal" trees (found inside a stand) it becomes obvious they can be significantly different.  A generalisation is often that edge trees are shorter and fatter (greater taper) and also tend to have large branching. An edge tree therefore...

Edge Plots – Forest Inventory Procedures Using PlotSafe

Before engaging staff in the field, an appropriate inventory planning step will save time and cost of the resulting forest inventory, as well as improve sample accuracy and precision. An element often missed when conduction forest inventories are dealing with forest...

Operational Immersive Visualisation and Measurement of Dense Point Cloud Data in Forest Inventory

Interpine starts a new 2-year project working with Forest Wood Products Australia on operational immersive visualisation and measurement of dense point cloud data in forest inventory.   This new project extends on work started in 2016, and involves working alongside...

Juniper Allegro 3 under testing for use in Forestry

Our team are reviewing the latest Juniper Systems device for Forest Inventory, Conservation projects and Log Scaling operations. Juniper Allegro's have been a goto device for rugged forestry applications and it is great to have the latest version running Android out...

Virtual Reality Forest Inventory – Tree Quality Assessment – May 2019 Update

Full Forest Inventory Tree Assessment using Virtual Reality (VR).   Data is collected using LiDAR and then field assessment is done within Virtual Reality.     Another iteration in the development of field assessment using VR using a point cloud collected from above...

Demostration of Virtual Reality Forest Inventory at ForestTech 2018

Interpine team recently presented and demonstrated at ForestTech 2018 the use of virtual reality for in forest inventory.   While the system can use terrestrial LiDAR the focus was on using utra dense point clouds from airborne sensors flying above the tree canopy....

PlotSafe in Virtual Reality

Assessing / cruising plantation pine recoverable volume by logtype (MARVL PlotSafe Assessment) in virtual reality. Yielding the potential of highly dense point cloud data from #UAV based LiDAR, Bruce Hill our senior operations manager trialed tree measurement and...

Interpine at Hawkes Bay Career Expo

Great to again be participating in another #careers #expo, this time in Hawkes Bay promoting the #forest industry with the Hawkes Bay #ForestryGroup (collective of forest companies in the region) and our Interpine team to our next generation of forest scientists,...

Deploying PlotSafe and YTGEN in Mexican Plantations

Interpine has recently undertaken a project to implement PlotSafe and YTGen within Mexico. The trip offered great interaction with local staff, and proved that good forest inventory measurement practices are internationally recognised principals.  Language is often...

PlotSafe Updated for Juniper Allegro 2 Handheld

PlotSafe has recently been updated for the Juniper Allegro 2 field computer by Silmetra. Interpine have been working with the new version of the well proven Juniper Allegro range since Dec 2014. Over this time our field staff have provided some feedback and working...

Customer Feedback

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Frequently Asked Questions

How does the software Licencing work?

A mobile handheld licence is a one-off purchase valid for the life of the device, whereas desktop licences are via annual subscription. Full and demo licences can be obtained by contacting Silmetra

Ltd, also contact them if you need to transfer a licence from a retired device to a new one. Of note, installing an update on a windows mobile device with an existing valid licence doesn’t require re-entering of licence info.

How can I start analysing the data I’ve collected?

Plotsafe data can be exported to three different formats. Firstly, as a format for generating forest yields using YTGen software. Data can be exported (or imported) in XML format. For general use, data can be exported as comma separated (CSV) text files, as a separate file for each data entry form. These can be opened in excel and summarised in a pivot table or chart, or better, imported into a database creating joins using the survey, stratum, plot and tree id fields. Once in a database create queries to transform the data how you want it, calculate statistics or filter out records meeting certain criteria. Setup a macro or stored procedure to automate the routine import of your data files.

If we didn't answer all of your questions, feel free to drop us a line anytime.