With a rising interest in place-based community engagement projects, many governments are utilising spatial engagement to crowdsource spatial data from their populations and put people in the driving seat when it comes to decisions about the places they live, work and play. The Australian Capital Territory (ACT) has been particularly successful in this regard, using The HiVE’s Social Map tool to find out where trees should be planted across the territory.

Over the next four years 17,000 new trees will be planted across the ACT by the territory government. Rather than go ahead with a program of planting solely decided by the government, and recognising the value of community-sourced data, the ACT Government turned to its citizens to find out where areas of opportunity exist for tree planting, or where existing trees are old or dying. Anyone from the ACT can contribute, and their suggested locations are easily viewable on the map.

Nearly 2000 responses have been collected on the Social Map, a substantial result which now gives the government a large set of locations to investigate and decide where to plant trees.

We like this project because it is simple, effective and makes use of a powerful tool in a highly successful way, gathering a rich and actionable set of meaningful data that can now be used to inform good decision-making, while giving citizens the opportunity to participate in the future of their territory. It is elegant in its simplicity, highly visual and engaging, and easy to understand and participate in.

This is also a major initiative for the territory as, after the devastating bushfires that ACT experienced in early 2020, this is a great example of consultative flora regeneration that draws on the influence of the community to rebuild after a natural disaster.

View the ACT’s Tree Planting across CBR project.

As spatial engagement emerges as a growing trend in online community engagement, Social Map has undergone a series of upgrades and updates, making it one of the most comprehensive and powerful spatial engagement tools available. Read more about recent updates to The HiVE's mapping tools.