Inventory Management System: Check Cruising
Overview
Check cruising (auditing) is the process of revisiting inventory plots to collect repeat measurements that are considered to be ‘truth’. Data from these repeat measurements can be used to assess the accuracy of the initial measurements. It is an important part of data quality assessment in an inventory management system. WSG Inventory Management System supports check cruising throughout the data lifecycle including cruise design, field data collection, data QA and reporting.
Check cruising within WSG Inventory Management System can be broken into 3 main stages:
Preparation - The preparation stage includes ensuring that the data model supports check cruising. While MobileMap inherently supports check cruising, with a dedicated ‘Check Cruise Mode’, the data model must include key fields to store check cruise information. These fields include the ‘Cruise_Type’ field at the Trees level, and optional notes and scoring fields at the Plots level. If check cruise scoring will be implemented within the system, then a Check_Rules table must be included in the data model.
Data Collection - Once the data model is verified, collecting check cruise data is facilitated via ‘Check Cruise Mode’ in MobileMap. The check cruiser must make sure they have downloaded the original cruise data (Stands/Plots/Trees/Logs) prior to heading into the field. At that point they enable ‘Check Cruise Mode’ in MobileMap, navigate to the designated Plots and collect the check cruise data.
Analysis - An important part of check cruising is the ability to calculate a check cruise score in order to obtain an objective assessment of cruise data quality. WSG Inventory Management System implements check cruise scoring within InventoryManager. This functionality is accessed via the Export function in InventoryManager, where calculation of check cruise is triggered by selecting ‘Include and Score’ or ‘Include, Score and Update’ option for Check Cruise Trees when exporting data.
In the sections below, the main stages above are described in more detail, including links to additional documentation.
Preparation - Data Model
Support for check cruising is provided via the following data model tables and fields:
Stands/Plots
Stands and Plots records are updated, rather than duplicated, during check cruise. Thus, any fields that will be collected by the check cruiser should be duplicated within the data model to avoid modifying or overwriting the original information in that field.
WSG recommends the following when duplicating fields in the Stands/Plots layers for check cruising
Add the suffix ‘_Check’ to the duplicated fields. For example, if the Plots layer includes a ‘Notes’ field and you would like the check cruiser to collect their own notes (rather than modifying the cruiser’s notes), add a ‘Notes_Check’ field to the data model. Examples include:
Notes_Check (Text, 1000 characters)
Cruiser_ID_Check (Text, 25 characters)
Flagged_OK_Check (Yes, 1 character, Coded Value Domain:Y=Yes, N=No)
Typically check cruise-specific fields are added to the end of the tables field list.
Update the MobileMap Settings to add any check cruise-specific fields to the ‘Check Cruise Only Fields’ list (Settings > MobileMap Cruise > Check Cruise > Check Cruise Only Fields).
Plots
Plots are updated (not duplicated) during check cruise. Field data collection fields are covered in the Stands/Plots section above. For check cruise scoring, add the following fields should be included in the Plots layer (for more details see https://woodlandsg.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portal/2/article/323125284 )
Check_Score
Data Type: Integer or Single
Purpose: Stores numeric check score for a plot. Populated by InventoryManager when the 'Include, Score and Update’ option for Check Cruise Trees selected during Export. Can be used with ArcGIS Dashboards to provide charts of check cruise score by Cruiser ID.
Check_Details
Data Type: Text, 1000 characters
Purpose: Stores the name of the check rules that were violated and which contributed to the Plot-level score. Will repeat the rule for each violation. For example, if 2 trees violated the rule named ‘DBH Error’ and 1 tree violated the rule named ‘Species Error’ then the Check_Details for that plot will be ‘DBH Error; DBH Error; Species Error’.
Check_Score_Date
Data Type: Date
Purpose: Stores the date/time that the check score was last updated. This helps when analyzing check cruise scores by understanding if the score was calculated before or after other data updates.
Trees/Logs - Trees and logs are duplicated during check cruise. Thus, they do not need duplicate fields added like Stands/Plots. The following field is required, however:
Cruise_Type
Data Type: Text, 1 character
Allowed Values (Coded Value Domain): S=Standard, C=Check Cruise
Purpose: Records whether tree is a Standard tree or a Check Cruise tree. This field is auto-populated in MobileMap. When MobileMap is set to ‘Check Cruise Mode’ then a value of ‘C' is stored for all collected trees, otherwise a value of 'S’ is stored.
Check_Rules - This table is used by InventoryManager to manage check cruise scoring rules. It must be stored in the same service as the other tables.
For more information on enabling and creating check cruise rules in InventoryManager see https://woodlandsg.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portal/2/article/307789990
Preparation - Settings
The following settings are used for Check Cruise
Required settings
Check Cruise Mode
Optional settings
Check Cruise Only Fields (Settings > MobileMap Cruise > Check Cruise > Check Cruise Only Fields)
Comma separated list of all
Check Cruiser ID Field
Enable Copying of Cruise Trees into Check Cruise