Web scraping technology for a dynamics analysis of tree crown streamlining, in relationships with wind and meteorological data

The life quality in our cities is also determined by the presence of urban greenery, in particular by the arboreal heritage, which provides multiple ecosystem services. On the other hand, trees by their nature are subject to external stresses, from decay and therefore collapse phenomena. In order to monitor the trees stability, numerous investigations are carried out concerning physiological and biomechanical aspects. Among these we find the controlled pulling test, an analysis that reproduces the wind action (in a static way) on the tree and studies the resistance to overturning, in particular with regard to root anchoring to the ground. The models applied within this analysis present an important gap: the behavior of the canopy of trees subject to the force of the wind. This undergoes a reconfiguration of the branching in order to reduce the drag force, with direct repercussions on the impact area, the canopy porosity and the frequency of oscillation. The study of reconfiguration is a complex analysis, in the literature there are few works in relation to the wide variability given by the age, the species, the position of the trees. This preliminary study aims to introduce a new survey technique based on the use of opportunity data. By exploiting the presence of many meteorological webcams and applying web scraping procedures, it is possible to acquire a lot of data all over the world regarding the behavior of the canopy during meteorological events, taking into account wind and precipitation. Meteorological data are combined with RGB processing of crown shooting. Framework proves the feasibility of a database developing able to collect the dynamic tree crown behavior. Database permits a high level deepening about on multiple variable affecting branching response to wind load, like rain, wind direction, prevalent wind, and temperature. The results obtained are preliminary, as some improvements are still needed from a processing point of view, such as the automatic procedure that determines the crown area. We believe that sharing this technique with the scientific community can create new development opportunities and thus allow a more effective stability analysis.