Okay, folks, this is Larry Pesevento starting out the show today, and I'll be posting a chart here in just a moment, but the first thing I wanted to do was to tell you the markets are under a great deal of pressure. As you can see here, we've had huge amounts of selling coming in with the Dow down substantially more than 600 points, the S&Ps down well over 80, and almost 400 in the NASDAQ, big, big drops in some of these things, so we'll be covering some of that. Also, most of the markets are in the red, as you can see, even some of the grains that have been strong are in the red, and that's basically a fear coming in. I think the thing that folks should really pay attention to today, folks, is the fact that we've had a situation going on here in the oil market where you realize how much oil is up from that three-drive to a bottom pattern that we had here just a few weeks ago. Let's try that eight days ago. We've gone from 76 to 93, folks. Something's going on. I don't know what it is. It could be that pipeline thing, or anything could be the reasoning for it, but we've actually made the 78% retracement of that move, and we made that in eight days. That itself is a pretty big deal, so I think it's interesting that we need to pay very, very close attention. To close today is extremely important, and the reason why is I'll cover that when we get into our regular show that we're going to do here after the break, but if you'll take a look at the chart that I put it in, this is the one that I put in. This is the one from 1987. You remember here, we made a bottom here on the 28th of September. We rallied up into October the 3rd, and then we had the big move down. This year, we came in to September 26th, and we also rallied up into the spot here of October the 4th, so very, very close. Now, what's interesting about this, we had Tim Boss as our guest here about two weeks ago, when he outlined this particular pattern and said the same astrological things that are happening then are happening now. If the market closes bad today, do not be long stocks over the weekend. I've been saying that for four or five weeks, but really don't be long stocks after that, because we've broken the 61% retracement of the whole move, folks, from Monday to Friday. I mean, that's really amazing. Now, when we get into the show a little bit later, we're going to have some really interesting charts to show you for what really happened today, and I hope you'll enjoy it. So, stay with us, folks. TFNN will be on for the next hour<PHONE_NUMBER>.


I decided to list my spare room on Airbnb, and it wasn't a long before a woman named Alex booked him, and I received a message from her before she arrived. She said, I think I want to move to London. I've never been to the UK before, but I'm looking for something different. I said, and then she said, will you help me please? If you have any time to show me around London, tell me what it's like living and working there, I'd really appreciate it. Sure, I said. So before she arrived, I tied it up the flat, and I put together a little welcome pack for her. So it had a tourist book, a tube map, and I made a little sheet of tips and tricks for getting around London. Like, don't smile at anyone in public, and always carry an umbrella, even if it looks sunny. On the day she arrived, I went to go and pick her up from the airport, and when we arrived home, I gave her a tour of the house and the welcome pack. She seemed to really like that. And when she'd rested for a bit, I gave her a quick tour of our area. And over the next couple of days, we went to a mixture of popular tourist attractions and also some quirks around the city that were my favourites. And at the end of this day, I took her for a meal, and I got to ask her about what her first impressions of London were like. And it was very interesting for me because I'd been born in London and lived there all of my life, and it was fascinating to get this different perspective. And in the end, she decided to come and live in London. So, go me, yay. Story number two. It's like rails is my city and I've lived here all of my life, said Theo to me one day. So Theo's my business partner. We run a company called Ignition Works, and at the moment we're working on a system that helps organisations better document and act on their processes. And we were pairing, and I was struggling to pick up this concept that was easy for him, and I was getting frustrated and anxious that he was disappointed in me. And these words actually made me feel better and put my struggle in perspective. I felt like I was a welcome visitor in his hometown of Ruby on Rails, and I was hoping to make this place my home too, and I had a friendly local by my side. So I started to think about how could I make the most of this and what could Theo do to help me. And thinking of these questions made me think of the time that Alex came to stay with me. We both wanted her stay to be as pleasant and enjoyable as possible, and this is where code hospitality comes from. So I think that by setting the scene of a host receiving a guest and exploring the ways that we can be effective in those roles, that can help us to think about how we should treat and respect new teammates, onboard people efficiently, and work with people on our code bases so that we're all having fun and being productive. And so I hope that you'll leave this talk with a new way to approach problem solving, particularly when it comes to coding and developing new features, and a new way to approach communication, particularly when it comes to giving and receiving feedback. And the gist is that with code hospitality we can improve collaboration and long-term learning across software teams everywhere. Code hospitality, the guide. So who is this guide for? We first have to check that everyone in this room, this is relevant to you. So we're going to do a little exercise, and you're going to see some statements on the screen, and if they relate to you, then raise your hand and keep it raised. And if the second one relates to you, then raise your second hand. And if more than two relate to you, then somehow indicate that, but you cannot shout out, so it's going to be fun. So you've recently started a new job. You have a new team member. You've recently rotated onto a new team. You've recently typed Rails new or started a new project. You're on a project using an unfamiliar language. Maybe you're a manager or a team lead, so you've got people looking to you for direction. You regularly collaborate with other people. You want your team to be productive? You want your team to be happy? Great, I think we've got everyone, so everyone's in the right place, fantastic. Okay, let's get that introduction.  And what did you do, if anything, to make their stay pleasant? I remember the last time you were a guest. Maybe some of you were staying with people in New York City. Did you enjoy it? So when we think about things like this, we all have clear ideas of what tends to make a good host or a good guest. So we're thinking about being a good host. You might clean up before your guest arrives. You might make sure they're suitably comfortable. You might make them some food. When you think about being a good guest, maybe you'll take a gift for your host or you'll offer to help around the house or tidy up after yourself. And this all boils down to hospitality, referring to the relationship between a guest and a host. And at the centre of it is this idea of showing respect for your guest, providing for their needs and treating them as equals. And so when we think about hospitality and how that relates in our society and culture, it seems to be quite ingrained and we know the stuff that we're meant to do. And we actually play the role of hosting guests every day, and yet we don't do such a good job of it. And I think that is because we don't quite connect the dots and the similarities between house hospitality and code hospitality. And so we sometimes forget ourselves and take those around us for granted. But work is the same. Because in the office I think we ask ourselves the same question as to when we have someone staying in our house. And that's how can we better collaborate when everyone involved is likely to be feeling vulnerable and uncertain. And so we have vulnerability because as a guest you might feel vulnerable going into an unfamiliar place and you're not quite sure how you're going to be received. And vice versa, as a host you have someone coming into an environment that you're used to and you don't know how that's going to play out. And that breeds uncertainty because no one quite knows what's going to happen. And so it's time to get back on track. So the first thing is setting the tone. So this is important because it's the foundation from which we then progress. And as I mentioned previously at the moment I don't think we're quite in the right frame of mind. So how can we do better? Mindset. So when I talk about guests and hosts that's not the same as a junior versus a senior. Rather it's more about familiarity and this can be across a range of domains. It could be with code but it could also be with the company or the team that you're working on. And when you're thinking about approaching problems with people it's important to realise that these roles can be fluid on one team. So I've worked with someone some months ago where they were really experienced iOS developer. I'd never done iOS before and so I was their guest in that sense. But this person had never done testing before and I'd done a lot of testing. And so I was their host in that sense. And so it's more about a frame of mind to a useful thinking framework when you're approaching problems. And so next thing, cleaning. When you're receiving somebody, do you ever tidy up beforehand? And when you're going to somebody else's house how do you feel if you turn up and it's a mess? What about code bases? So it's the same, just like a house it's good to keep it presentable as you go along because guests can be unexpected. But even if you never have a guest, if you're working on a code base by yourself and it's messy then you've got a lot of upfront complexity that you have to deal with and that adds to your cognitive load. And so working on more complex problems becomes more tasking. So try and keep your code base in a state ready to receive unexpected guests. And what does clean mean? Everyone cleans up in different ways. And so some of the things that Theo and I like to ask ourselves are have we named things consistently so it's clear what's going on or is our code very readable or not. And so you have to do what you can in that sense. OK, so now you're in the right mindset and you've cleaned up as best as you can. When your guest arrives, how do you show them around? So I sent this tweet out some time ago and I asked, do you give tools of your code base and if so, where do you start? And I had quite a few people say that they started with their tests. And one woman said, for example, she works at an insurance company and they start with the main insurance policy object and then branch off to all the objects that link to that one. This word came up a couple of times. Diagram. So I had a couple of people who discussed how they found that the most effective way to show people around their code bases was through a series of diagrams and telling a story. And that was so that they could give context to the current state of their code base rather than just go through a list of objects. So what might make up a component of such a story? So you might have your code object, so the objects in your code base, what methods they have and how they link to one another. But there's also the wider business concepts. So some months ago, Theo and I, we worked on a project which had a really big nutrition component and we did a lot of reading and research around different diets and how that affected different body types. And that helped to inform how we split up different responsibilities in the objects that we were coding. So if you can think about the wider business concepts that you work with and how that maps to the code objects that you have and stream that narrative from them, then that provides a very visual and compelling story for new people coming onto your code base to understand the decisions that you and your teammates have made and why the code base is currently in the state that it is. But what type of guest is coming? Will you be there to show them around? So in code hospitality, we have a special version of guest. An open source guest. So these are people who come into your house when you're not around. And so how do you show them around? So have you ever gone to stay in someone's house and they're not there? Maybe it's like an Airbnb thing. You tend to find some form of letter or guide or some form of instructions. So if you were to go and stay at my friend Pete's house, you would find these are one of many guides that you'd find and this one is how you would feed his dogs because they will be there. And so maybe we're thinking about something like a readme. So readme's are great for consolidation when you are there and you've been showing someone around and someone can go in their own time to sort of mull on all the things that you've told them. But they're sort of essential when you're not there because how does someone know how to get started or what to do? But what kind of things do we typically see in a readme? So looking at the template readme from Rails at the moment, you have things like the Ruby version or system dependencies or how to set up the database and run the tests. And these are all great for getting people set up but it doesn't really help you decide how you then progress and how you start delivering features. So what more could we do? And I did some exploring around different readme's and I found this section in the Active Record Readme and it talks about how Active Record is an implementation of object relational mapping and it describes a bit about what that means, links to some blog posts and then gives some high-level bullet points on what that approach means for how the bit of code is being developed. And so someone turning up to Active Record can get a sense of what the whole project's about without needing a maintainer there and if they need a bit more information they have some guidelines for where then to go. And so what if we started thinking more about helping, particularly on open source projects, having readme's that were more hospitable in this sense? So here's an example from the Cold Hospitality Guide app and what does it consist of? So you've got your installation, usage, contribution but there's also things like history. So again, going back to that storytelling thing, how did the code base get to where it is now? Approaches, what are the patterns that you use? What reading material is there and it could be blog posts that you are external or that you and your team have written? And also this idea of a walk-through. So how can you get this idea of a guided walk-through in a code base? And so maybe it's this idea that you say, hey, here's one feature that we had, here is the spec that was written to deliver that feature and here's how we wrote that code to get there. So however you do it, it's really important to tell new teammates the story of your code base. So you need to set the scene, explain the history and engage them. Okay, now you've given the tour. It's now about putting striking balance in the atmosphere. So what do I mean by that and how do you do it? So in thinking about balance, I think that you're choosing between fish or fishing. So what do I mean by this? So I was chatting with a colleague a few months ago and he said, you know the phrase, give someone a fish and you feed them for a day. Teach them to fish and you feed them for a lifetime. Well what if that person is starving? Will you ever get a chance to teach them if you don't give them some fish first? And he got me thinking about needing to strike the balance between fish and fishing. And when we're talking about code bases and having new team members, it's this idea of how can you give them a helping hand and hold their hand and walk them through things but also make themselves sufficient so that they can get on with development without you necessarily being there. So I think when someone first comes onto your team or joins your code base it's really important to give them a lot of fish first. So be super generous with your time and attention. And so you want your guests to be as self-sufficient as quickly as possible but you first need to show them that this is a safe space to ask questions, make requests and make mistakes. So how might you go about doing that? Well for some things to think about are is there something within your team or the thing you're working on that you know a lot about that someone else doesn't? Perhaps you can offer to do a lunch and learn session with that person or give them more detailed overview. And you may think it's obvious but it's really important to always make it clear that your new guest can ask you anything at any time. And for the guests it's really important to always ask questions whether that's about something you've seen or a term you've heard that you're not sure about, you should feel safe to ask any question that's on your mind. And then you might have a way that you're giving your tour or showing things but it's also important to ask your guest is there anything that you haven't seen yet and that could be anything from some certain test in the code base to where the bathrooms are, you don't know what it is until you ask and guests shouldn't be afraid as well to say thanks for the store or whatever but I'd like to see this or I'd like to see that. So I was really lucky because my first development job was at Pivotal and at Pivotal they pair all the time so you always have someone to talk to and to ask questions but it's been really upsetting to hear of the number of stories from other newer developers that I know where they'll be in an office and they will want to ask a more experienced developer a question but they're worried about the fact that they might be bothering them because that person looks like they're focusing on their own work or they've already asked it once or twice and can I ask again or will they think I'm stupid and so most of the time that person would be fine if you ask them but it's really hard to tell and so it's very important particularly when you have people who are new in the environment to be aware of the impression that you're giving off and to help give clues so for example you might be putting on your headphones because you just want to listen to some music but you could make it clear to your new guest that I'm actually interuptible I'm just listening to some music and so feel free to grab me any time and if you're not interuptible then say that, say hey I need an hour or two to focus in on something but perhaps in the meantime maybe note down any questions that you have and we can get to them later so this is all about demonstrating that you want your new teammates to feel at home as soon as possible so remember when I picked up Alex from the airport that was me going out of my way a little bit just to make her feel relaxed and to set the whole trip off to a good start so now you've set the tone it's now about delivering value so this is about now that we're coding we want to get productive and start delivering features that's what we're here for and so have a question for those of you who use rails or maybe if you don't use rails you can think of work or tools that you use regularly at work but if I asked you to think and draw a map of rails right now without too much thinking what do you think you'd draw, what do you think would come out would it look something like this or maybe this so notice how all of those maps looked quite different and they were all drawn by people who've been developing in rails for many years and the key point that I want to get across by showing you those diagrams is that when we're thinking about programming and working on frameworks that we're familiar with it's not about whether you understand rails or whatever framework you're using but how you understand it and why you've come to see it that way because this is what helps us to determine which starting point you're going from when you start to tackle problems with people so think of the next feature coming up in the project that you're working on the next maybe user story that you're going to pick up and where are you going to start with that chances are if you're quite familiar with the codebase you'll have a clear idea of where you're going to go but what if you had someone sitting next to you who'd never worked on your codebase before where are they going to be starting from so let's assume that the next story is as a user I want to get inside the Tower of London so for those who don't know, Tower of London is a historic castle by the Rither Terms in London and so you're sitting down at your computer and what you see is this nice aerial view of the Tower of London and you're starting to think about how are we going to get in and you've got someone sitting next to you working with you and what you don't realise is that they're seeing this and so they're also sitting there being like okay we're going to get inside the Tower of London maybe just need to walk a few steps forward so the thing here is that if you're both looking at these things the proposed solutions are going to be very different even though you both understand what the problem is and so your problem solving is going to be difficult it's going to be painful take longer than it needs to because you're talking from different perspectives so how do you work out when you're working with people that you might be seeing such very different views and it reminds me of this time that when Alex was with me so we have in the UK we have a large supermarket train called Tesco and Alex had gone to the shops I was at home and she called me to say that she was outside the Tesco and she didn't know how to get home so I said oh that's easy go right and go left and then you'll be on our street she said okay and she called me back a few minutes later to say yeah I'm still not home so I said okay don't worry go back to the Tesco and I'll come pick you up of course when I got to the Tesco she wasn't there because I should have asked her which Tesco she was talking about but I didn't because I just assumed that she went to the one that I always went to and so it's the same thing when coding we need to work out where each of us is standing so that we can move closer together what might this look like in practice so some weeks ago Theo and I were working on a problem and we written the test and now we needed to implement implement the code implement the code and we were just having this conversation and it wasn't progressing anywhere and we were sort of talking about the same things but not and so Theo said well why don't you draw how you understand the problem and so I did and I drew this and just by drawing this it was clear where my confusion stemmed from I wasn't clear about which messages were being sent where or the order of which things were going to happen and so we had enough further discussion and we decided that a role activity diagram might be more suitable and so together we drew one of those and as soon as we drew that everything became so much clearer the solution to the problem seemed very easy and we were able to finish off that feature quite quickly and so when you're working on your pairing with people or collaborating with people it's really important to assume that you and your teammate are both lost even if you're the one that's more familiar and you know or think you've got the right answer it's really helpful to say it's not about right, it's not about wrong we're just in different places and now we need to work out where each of us is standing and then get close together and this is where scribbling down diagrams can really help you to do that and these are just back of the tissue paper quick scribbles just to get that sense of where you're standing and so when you're working together questions are going to crop up and it's very interesting particularly when you're talking about someone who's more familiar in a space to someone who's less familiar about the way you choose to deal with those questions so another example from when Alex was with me one day she came to me and said hey I need to get to the pharmacy and I didn't have time to take her there and so I said oh it's right next to the restaurant that we went to the other night and then she said but I don't remember how to get to that restaurant and that's when I realised that just by walking Alex to the restaurant in back she didn't have to engage with that whole process so she didn't really remember where we went and even if she had remembered bits and pieces of it it might be too much for her to take it all in and so this time I decided to sit down with her with a map and say here's where the home is and here's that restaurant that we went to yesterday and here's the route we took and also map out some other ways that we might have taken to get to that restaurant and then I said well here's the pharmacy, here's the closest pharmacy so based on the information I've given you how do you think you want to get to the pharmacy and this is a really powerful way to troubleshoot with someone and to ask someone questions because they want some extra information because you can check that you've been understood based on the information you've given but also as someone who's more familiar in an environment you're going to end up exploring new answers that you didn't even consider and so how might this work when we're talking about software development so when you're sitting down with someone to develop a new feature it's really interesting to be able to say rather than say oh this is how we always do it let's just do it this way well here are some ways that we've approached it in the past and here is how another person may approach it for example what are the pros and cons of each of these ways because one of the things that it's really important to keep in mind particularly if you're a more experienced person working with someone who isn't so experienced is that it can be very hard for the person who is not so experienced to work out when something is just the right way to do it based on not falling into trouble later on or when something is just your habit or something that you prefer doing and there might actually be many other valid approaches that you can take and then you should ask the question like which way shall we go and have that discussion together and so that way both the host and the guest are brought into the decision making process and both are providing value so it's really important to move the conversation away from implementation detail to the border concepts because like I said the decision making process and it means that those who are more experienced don't just get into old habits or it's just stuck into the things that they're used to doing and they'll be opened up to potentially better approaches that they didn't even consider so after you've worked on something you need a way of assessing how it's gone and so this is important because things don't always go to plan and so you need a way to smooth these things out and improve them for next time current issue with this feedback is hard and also sometimes it's not clear where feelings lay in the workplace so I first gave this talk at a conference in May of this year and during the Q&A I had a guy ask the question which essentially amounted to the comment you spoke about feelings a lot seemed strange for a work environment and I was like because I was like oh I clearly didn't get my point across well and so I went away and I thought about why he would say something like that and it made me think that it stems from this idea that we're all quite logical, rational people and we need to focus on that at work to make sure that we're productive and if we're talking about feelings that can be distracting but the thing is we're obviously not 100% impartial and things do get in the way whether that's in the workplace or in your personal lives and you need a framework to be able to talk about that in the workplace because that can help us to understand how we can then empathise with ourselves and also with other people and then deal with them so we can continue staying productive so how can we make these sort of discussions easier so remember the time when I had dinner with Alex it was a way that she was in a relaxed setting and she could tell me exactly what she thought about London without feeling any pressure so how many people in this room have regularly scheduled retros yeah so lots of people have times where they get together their team to reflect on the past week and think about their processes and what they should change and improve but I'm not talking about team retros I'm talking about one-on-one retros which I just don't think we do enough of these days so I want us to be having more retros where you have a discussion with someone that you've either paired with or collaborated with that day so how do you have such a conversation so first and foremost you need to talk about your feelings but these are feelings that are focused and referenced back to particular observations so something in particular happened and you're going to say how that made you feel and then you're going to tie that back to an underlying need so this is a need that you have that has caused this feeling and typically if it's a negative feeling then it's a need that's not been met and if it's a positive feeling then it's a need that has been met and then based off of that you make a request and the point of this is that you don't want to pass any judgment on the person that you're talking with you're creating a no judgment say-soon and the idea is that you're drawing attention to the ways that your needs are being met or not being met so what are some examples if you're working with someone in a coding situation you hog the keyboard so we don't really this is quite difficult to say and it's not very productive so how about something like I feel disappointed because I was hoping to say what I've learned on writing aspect tests would it be possible for me to drive more next time we write tests and so the need here maybe I need to get better at writing tests then there's yeah it was great that's easy to say but what does it mean how about I'm feeling pleased because when I explained things to you you would stop typing and turn your body towards me so I had confidence that you were hearing everything I said it'd be great if you continued to do that I'll try and do the same and so the need here may be I need to know I'm being heard and a useful format to kick off such a conversation is what should we keep doing and what should we change so when giving and receiving feedback focus on expressing your feelings based on observation and need and not on passing judgments on the actions of others so let's say that we follow these recommendations what does code hospitality mean for us we often hear that it's important to empathise but it's hard to grasp what that means and know where to start and I think that having something like code hospitality gives us a useful mindset for thinking about how your colleagues may be feeling as you work with them because we've all had experiences of going into environments where others are more familiar particularly in other people's homes and we can use that to relate to workplace scenarios and we all do good work but I think that with the ideas behind code hospitality we can keep doing great work because we won't take the people around us for granted we'll continually show them respect and we can also get past problems that typically tend to hold teams up and focus on delivering value free from tensions and insecurity so that's the end but no guide is complete without frequently asked questions so I know that the first question you're all dying to ask is where can I buy a copy of the code hospitality guide well don't worry it's free and you can find it at this address where can I find out more about communicating with my colleagues effectively so I really recommend this book Nonviolent Communications by Marshall B. Rosenberg we're often taught that the way to communicate is by making judgments or demands and this is basically a way of finding harmony with the way we communicate based on feelings, needs and requests like I discussed earlier if you want to find out more about running a community here's a really good blog post from Pivotal which is all about how you can sit with your pair and compose an email together and through that process work out what you need to change what you need to do better hashtag code hospitality for discussing more of these ideas or giving your own ideas big shout out to these people who are absolutely amazing in helping me write this talk I want to leave with one quick final thought of all of this is being vulnerable and it's very important that we we can do this in our workplace because it allows us to discover what our true needs are and when we know this we can help communicate that better with other people be more empathetic with other people and help others around us to like troubleshoot our problems and so the ultimate aim is to allow yourself to be vulnerable in front of other people and make a safe space so that other people can be vulnerable in front of you and I hope that you will join me in trying to find ways that we can realistically do this in our workplaces so how was your stay? thank you if you can give some suggestions for organisations that aren't currently like making this a core priority to shift to making that a core priority yeah so this is the question oh there's a mic so you guys have one I'm used to not having a mic string question so for organisations that don't have it as a core priority I think it's important for for someone like who knows of these ideas and is aware of them and wants to help getting their teams to do it I think it's useful to start on a one on one basis so do those retros with someone and say hey can we have a chat about how that's gone I think the book the Normavallic Communication book is a really good way to get people in your organisation thinking about some of these ideas and so I mean once at Pivotal we did a book club one time so it's the kind of thing where if you have a way that you can get together a group of colleagues and have a little book club and read some of the chapters and discuss them that's the way that you start getting the ideas in your organisation so it's about trying to make discussions on a one on one basis or on a small team basis so that people start thinking about these kinds of ideas I guess do you have suggestions for how to like how do you balance between writing more code and introducing people to code like creating those walkthroughs like how do you create a process where that happens automatically sort of like testing it's sort of like a technical debt for introducing new members to the team as a new code is created so do you have like a process around how to manage that so you're saying how do you find the balance between needing to keep developing and onboarding new people so I actually think the most effective way is to pair more because that way if you're always working with someone you are always delivering features but you're having an ongoing conversation so I found my time at Pivotal extremely extremely valuable as a going straight from a boot camp into that environment because I felt productive from day one we were delivering features I was working on their cloud field and found your team then and this was if I was alone on this I'd feel very out of my depth so I was with someone and I could ask the questions as we were developing as we were running tests and so if you've got someone that you're working with who's open to helping you out and is you know patient and is keen to answer your questions then I think if you can get more pairing happening in your work environment then that will naturally form part of the process and you'll maintain productivity as well Awesome let's have another round of applause for Nadia


to welcome all of you. Thank you for joining the panel today. And Paul Brown, the leader of the Sentinel Project. Perhaps, Paul, we could just quickly introduce colleagues around the table and then after that if I may, just call on you to give a short overview of the project to set the scene before we start our discussions. So, Paul. No problem. Thanks very much. So yeah, I'm Paul Brown from Ferrer Science Limited, leading on the Sentinel TreeScape project. I'm a remote sensing scientist, a geometric surveyor. Personally concerned with monitoring the tree scape using remote sensing technology to monitor tree scape. So, thanks to the management of our current tree scape also to monitor the new tree scape as we have policy objectives to plant trees, but how we monitoring those objectives. That's a very brief introduction to me. I'll pass over to Rachel Galton from Newcastle. Rachel Galton, I'm a senior lecturer in remote sensing at Newcastle University and my research areas in remote sensing predominantly and other ground based sensing approaches for monitoring vegetation health and dynamics. And we'll go to Barbara, my colleague at Ferrer. Hi, Barbara Axner. I'm a social scientist at Ferrer working in the land use team together with Paul. And I've been working on work package for the exact name of which I forgot but essentially is all about citizen science aspect and working with tree wardens to make sure that we document their experience. I'm director of tree science and research at the Tree Council. Tree Council is the umbrella organization for tree groups across the UK dealing particularly with the non wood trees outside woods in all sorts of habitats. And we brought the citizen science to the mix to assist Paul and the team to collect some data into the ground truth that was real people. Fantastic. Very good. Well, thank you for your introductions. Paul, perhaps you could sort of set the scene for us and tell us a bit about the project and what you've achieved. No problem. I'll just share my screen. Yeah, I'm just going to introduce the central tree scapes for plant biosecurity and risk management multiple threats to give it its full title project. So let me give a very brief overview. Firstly capturing the multidisciplinary team and mentioned it before. We're lucky to have scientists and collaborators from Ferrer University, University of stress Clyde UK sensory ecology and hydrology. The tree council, along with the tree council broadened tree warden network, and then Norfolk County Council. Why monitor tree health trees are under increasing stress from pest diseases climate change as implications for conservation biodiversity ecosystem services, and also public safety. A little timeline just looking at some threats and incursions over the past few years. Just want to highlight obviously the major one we've we've all heard of in 2012 of ash die back decimating the species in the UK. Project aims. First thing was to develop and demonstrate a monitoring system to detect stress from multiple causes, which is able to be deployed at a landscape regional scales, we're not looking at any specific cause of stress we're just looking at general condition of the tree scape and looking at deviations from the baseline. Were we combining sits and scientists with technology and modeling methods, hopefully provide a blueprint for future deployment throughout the UK. This little diagram constructed by my colleague Rachel Galton just gives a really nice overview of the project. I'm not going to go through it here but it's a nice pausing point in the video if you have a look at it in the future. So the IOT network the Internet of Things Network we've deployed and we deployed we commencing the 10th of May 2021. This is one of the hubs the main hubs that all the sensors transmit their data to which further transmits back the database at Farrah. So we have the tree talkers directly mountains trees have 60 of those deployed across three sites. We have 12 soil sensors in groups of two different depths deployed across sites and then we also have to open sky spectrometers allowing us to correct for transmit mittens to the canopy. We have three sites, long plantation, which is a long thin plantation next to a road. We have a woodland site belt plantation and we also have an agricultural site that Lingwood with trees along the railway line. So just look at those sites in a bit more detail the main points here are the red and the green spots. The red show the locations of the tree talkers where we have those sensors mounted on trees and the green show further observation sample trees. So the citizen scientists will be monitoring their observations on both the tree talk trees and the further 30 trees per site of the sample trees. So looking at a tree warning engagement has been a massive part of the project the citizen science aspects of the project. The initial training was conducted on the 12th of June in 2021 a month after deployment of the sensors, and there's been continued engagement activities with thanks to the tree council. Looking at seasons in the woods so we've done workshops of spring in the woods summer in the woods autumn in the woods winter in the woods. So we're down with the volunteers the wardens and we have IOT technology discussions. We have observation discussions but we also have tree walks looking at species identifications and fungal identification just really good days in the woods that keeps that motivation going. So we've conducted further tree warden network workshops last summer, bringing in wider East Anglia looking at the different tree warden groups in the area, and how the motivation will be there to scale up the project beyond the And throughout the project Barbara and a team have been conducting surveys of volunteer motivations and what's keeping these volunteers motivated. And one key thing that's came up when we were looking at preparing for this was the technology really driving engagement and the wish to get involved with the tech, as well as the tree health observations from the volunteers was was really key coming out of this. And to that end we created a tree talk a data hub, which allows the tree wardens volunteers to go online and look at the condition of the batteries the battery level for each individual sensor. And they've taken ownership of changing the batteries as and when they need changing during their observations, saving the core project team, having to travel four hours each way to change those batteries so that's been a huge help to the project. Remote sensing data we've captured drone imagery throughout the course of the two years. We've also acquired a satellite image from the archive in September 21, and we test another satellite in September 22, allowing for the remote sensing upscaling and modeling part of the project. They're just going to briefly go through some data streams that coming from the sensors. So this is from one of the soil. Well, this is from some of the soil sensors, and looking at how they capture environmental events. So this is in July last year, and in Norfolk suffered quite severe droughts in that period so we can see the change in the soil temperature as it rises throughout the months peaking around the 21st 22nd of July and then slowly falling with a with a small secondary peak. Unexpected finding was trees falling. Storm Dudley and Eunice passed through our sites in February last year. We can just highlight on this particular tree the yellow the red and the orange areas where it's like normal movement within the tree. And then on the 17th of the green area there's there's a bit more movement happening and then suddenly on the 18th the tree falls down and we can see a huge amount of movement in that sensor until it reached its final resting place so we're really capturing these events in the data. We can see it like transmission through the canopy behaving as you'd expect less transmission in the summer months more transmission in the winter months, but very different on individual trees so it's really important to understand what we're looking at what the sensor is looking at so some are looking at more than one tree, and some of Ivy on the tree on the trunk so it's decreasing that transmission also in the summer months. It's very important to understand what you're looking at before you can interpret the data. And lastly just looking at some key findings to date so major learning outcomes is citizen science observations can capture variability in tree health. They can be subjective, obviously individuals look at things differently, but we try to constrain that as much as possible by creating an app which gives you, excuse me, drop down menus. Excuse me it gives you drop down menus and list the questions as you go through them. There's also a thing that would potentially be difficult when scaling up the project it hasn't really been an issue in this project we've got a core set of volunteers, which have been extremely engaged, excuse me, which have been extremely engaged throughout the project. And then but then there are preferences on areas to monitor like some woodlands are nicer than others, so it's nicer to walk in those woodlands. There's an ownership of the project and self organization from the citizen scientists really wanting to take those the technology and look after their technology and they're still wanting to do that even further by going further in battery changes and repairing the tech in the field. So this challenges with the technology that has been hub failures, which causes the data hub the battery level and monitoring system to not be updated that has caused issues. And the time it takes to get a new hub and go down and change that hub is a problem with the it when I work. It's not one we have one we have managed to overcome. The tree talks themselves a rich, high temporal resolution, but quite a noisy data source in some senses, a need for extended long term data to establish the baselines. The current objective is what working on the moment is to integrate the data streams observations by modeling to predict tree health status analysis of wider volunteer survey and stakeholder workshop to scale up the system. So I want to make data available for the NERC data centers after the project and find ways to continue to support the broadband tree warden network into continuing the project beyond the June deadline when this project comes to an end. That's a very brief summary of the project for me. Thank you. Paul, thank you. That's great. That's fantastic. I think you raised a very relevant example of ownership of the project and people coming in changing the batteries. I think there's nothing more practical about that than that. No, I think I think that's very, very good overview and you had these three sites I'm just wondering if any of the you mentioned some websites and so on other resources that could be shared with hope today as a link link so you can put the websites aren't public they're very constrained to the network at the moment just because you know we didn't want to advertise the locations because one key thing was vandalism and stuff are these are these internet things just going to be smashed out the woodlands after two weeks of deployment. Thankfully that never happened never had one issue with that at all so that was a really good learning outcome. But yeah, we've tried to keep it private at the moment but we will make it. Yeah, it's always a challenge when you put Santa's what's going to happen to those. But I mean john if I could if I could just turn to you I'm interested in the, the representativeness of this and what what's the sort of size of the challenge that that you're addressing here and the, you know you've got these these these sites. And how the issues that you are addressing really a fat society and wider wider implications. So obviously from the perspective of of the environment trees are a keystone species in that mix and obviously there's been a lot of focus over the last, over the last, particularly the last five years about the role they play in carbon and carbon and the greatest threat that we face to our treescape is that is that a rising of new pest and diseases that might that might alter the balance of species, particularly in the case of the work that we've been doing. Ash dieback which there's, there's the potential, there's about four billion ash trees in the UK of all sizes from little seedlings up to big mature trees. And if we lose all of those then then having an understanding of the changes that will make the landscape so understanding what's going on in the tree and helping to understand and model that and be able to understand that is a really vital part of going forward. And even, even that element of just being able to spot a new pest or disease arising bit to be on that cusp of of being aware that there's a problem before it may show in the, in the data because obviously once it's, once it's got hold it might be too late. So, so for us, this project was a really exciting way of bringing real people into study something that was local to them but which had, which had new technology and new devices involved in it that meant that way could see that they were part of something wider, something that was addressing national problems and if we get it right, that would be something that rolls out elsewhere. And one of the biggest issues we faced was that of risk management on the roads. You know if we if we have lots of dying ash trees by the roads. How we predict is there ways to be able to suggest that we know that this is coming. So although Paul said it was a surprise that that we had trees falling over in the data. And it was a bit of a spire to having trees falling over when we when we set up the, the grid and the fact that it happened and that we were able to identify that and start to be able to predict before and after what the conditions were in the tree. I think was truly, truly remarkable. And as you remember the huge consequences that Dutch Elm disease had on the landscape will will quickly realize that ash dieback is a major, major threat I guess, I guess now as well. I'm looking forward to hearing about the technology particularly about the tree talk as I'm very intrigued by that. But maybe just before we come to the sort of tech that you've been using. One thing we've been asking all of the all of the demonstrator teams. The constructing a digital environment program is all about the digital representation of the world around us and there've been all the different themes that the projects have been working with and you're working with treescapes. I'm just just interesting what you're what you're you and your colleagues perspective of is a digital environment. You know, how, how have you, how have you used digital in your work to, you know, to, to, to conduct the science that you're, you're, you're developing what is it about digital that's lent itself very well to your, your project. I think the digital I mean it allows for remote monitoring. There's a potential for full coverage across the landscape, combining the, the IoT tech train train machine learning algorithms for extrapolation across that landscape. So it allows for a potential targeting of ground survey you're never going to replace ground survey and expertise but it provides a targeting of that as opposed to just sample survey. So it will take time saving and being in the right place at the right time, essentially. And I think particularly now we're in an era where technologies are maturing at the same time. So we've got data tech we've got the technology about these sensors you can put on trees that measure trees. But we've also got the analysis the machine learning the AI and the computer station or cloud computing the power that's able to analyze this data. So that's an area that is reaching a level of maturity but then also that is a challenge because technology is changing all the time. You buy one sensor. Two years ago it's then replaced by a new sensor. So how do you integrate that new technology. That's a, that's a very common theme that a lot of the products have been grappling with actually a different interpretation. Yeah, so it's fascinating point. You mentioned the technology develops and we'll come to that in a moment but I'm just interested really how do you think this, what you've done here could be scaled up or I mean how easy would it be to reproduce taking a bit of an overview of the project what you've done in other environments and other wood treescapes. Yeah, I think scaling up it's always been in the back of my mind it's always in my mind for other projects as well is like doing these remote sensing these digital projects on the pilot study sites and small scales as always. Always the question is, is how do we do that across the whole of the UK treescape. The broader network is is a geographically spread network I mean we've we've created workshops. We've conducted workshops that bring in the other networks within the her wider East Anglia area the wider North Vicaria not because the broadened area and look at those motivations so the technologies are the apps there to measure the trees it's just and the motivation is there it's just the logistics of bringing those people together. And then the remote sensing data is there to scale up you know we can, we can take those ground observations look at the spectral signatures and the canopy and see how, how we far we can extrapolate before we need another sensor network and then extrapolate beyond that. And what's the expense of that data, you know that there's another challenge is the expense of that remote sensing data so I think the potential is definitely there is just overcoming those, those issues of expense and technology availability. So you don't need to instrument every tree it's a question of representativeness of the data you have. I mean, let's turn to the technology now. Before we before you go there I think, I think what Paul said is the technology is now maturing to a point you can do it the really interesting part is for us was was the community would they would they engage with it would they take it into their heart. What we've learned from this experience is is if you give the citizen scientists and active voice in the program, it becomes less of a, we're doing it at you rather than we're doing it with you if they feel that they're part of the conversation. They definitely took ownership and that that simple one of replacing batteries. And that will be started as a, as the problem the community saw that as an opportunity they were part of the conversation. So it's, it's scaling that will require. It's eminently possible but it will require that community engagement that makes people want to be part of the journey and trees are one of those aspects that people seem to really relate to so I think it would be utterly scared level. Thanks, John. I think in a way you've just helped address the first of the question that's currently open on the chat which someone's asked, what are the post projects activities following on from the project and will and indeed can it be scaled, scaled up across the country so I think I think you've both given some thoughts thoughts on that. Thank you for that. Rachel, I believe you're the other tech. The person here tell us a bit about the sensors and the technology that you're, what is a tree talker. So thanks. This project sort of being quite like it's quite complex and we're actually deploying quite a lot of different technologies within the project so ranging from the sort of field app that the wardens are using to collect the data. And they're accessible sort of dashboard that's helping them to monitor the network through the internet things tree talkers they'll come back to in a minute and then the layers of drone and satellite imaging that we hope will help us scale that up so there's a whole sort of new tech in that I think that's really exciting in this project probably is the tree talkers so these are wireless sensor network. And that's all online communicate through through hopes that they can then stream straight back to us at Ferra. And they measure quite a wide range of things. These are sensors that were developed in Italy originally and and supplied by company called nature for and they measure a whole range of canopy parameters tree parameters tree physiology but also some basic climate parameters so for example measure humidity and temperature as well which lets us really try to relate some of the tree physiology to what's going on in the environment which is quite important. So within the little boxes tricks if you like, and they have an accelerometer which so we get this tree movement data that will show briefly. And they have a radial growth sensor that attaches to the trunk the tree and this meant measure the stem growth. And they have SAP flow probes but they also have a capacitance sensor on those probes that measure the stem water content. So it's interesting for you for me as a remote sensing scientist is they have an upwards looking spectrometer that's measuring light transmittance through the tree canopy in 12 different wavelength region so that's giving us really rich data set of what's the canopy condition like but also potential to unpick some of the spectral changes that might occur for example if leaf pigments are changing due to disease or phenology as well. So it's taking a measurement every three hours so we get a very rich data set have been running for about a year and a half now. So it's quite an extensive data set observations, I, I'm not going to try and remember or quote how many measurements we now have, but it's a lot of data across all of those things. The other aspect of the project that gets really counts tech is the the machine learning aspect of trying to bring this together so we've been developing a or fairer been developing a hidden Markov chain model which is a type of model that can hopefully infer the current status of an object based on probabilities and also previous and current observations. And what are the challenges of our projects how do we bring all these observations together we've got the sort of non tech citizen science observations we've got the tree talker ones we've got the drone and satellite but they're all at different temporal frequencies. They all cover different areas they're all scattered in different ways across our study site and so on. And so the idea of that machine learning model is to try to combine those different observations and start to predict the health status of trees based on those. And, and currently that's been parameterized based as well also on the long term research of trees that's been conducted by an offer countercouncils we're also bringing in some wider tree data sets there as well. Well, I mean yeah thanks thanks I mean it's interesting to hear about the Italian sense that I don't know if it's possible to share a link to the to those for people to be fascinated and follow that follow that up. We've heard about batteries running out that's that's not really unexpected but I mean I think of every time I've tried to use sensors and woodland you find that GPS signals can't be attained and, and I just wondering about communication and getting data back out of the out of the dense canopy forest back to base I mean what what are some of the other challenges that you've had getting these sensors in the ground. I mean the main technology challenges that they've been all of those things you described I think we've probably encountered, and I think we're going to touch a bit more in a minute on the sort of environment, the actual sensors of the tree talk and network. But in a broader sense I think the biggest challenge for us technologically really has been how to interpret the data that comes from those sensors because we're working with sensors that whilst they've been deployed in a few small sites in other countries haven't really been widely deployed and they haven't been used for tree health monitoring extensively specifically, and although for some of the sensors like that flow there's sort of established, obviously we've been measured in trees before there's some baseline data to go on. But other things like the open looking spectrometers that really isn't there so how do we separate out the noise how do we establish what's down to the species or site versus what's down to the health status. So I think a lot of the challenges have actually been in what to do with the data set and then how to scale that up and how to relate it to the remote sensing for example that's viewing the forest from the top so seeing understory change as well as the tree canopy, and so on. And I'll let Paul may recover this pitfalls of the actual sensor network. Paul what are the pitfalls of the sensor network thanks Rachel. It's been a learning 2021 was a learning curve.  And actually, the data was, it was falling behind and we were wondering why and I just moved it to the north and it picked straight back up so it's just little learning things like that. Obviously at the beginning of the projects we had logistical issues around COVID-19 that was a major thing for us to deploy that network. I've just mentioned transferring to different climates, you know, having water ingress and some of the in some of the sensors so learning that we're learning okay a bit of a silicon sealant around the around the edge of silicon grease around the o-rings just eliminates that completely. So just that sort of learning.  Little things. Yeah, like you say it's so important so huge and animals. It's chewing through wires of soil sensors, you know things like that. But that's when the citizen sciences have also been involved a lot more is this fixing wires like that they notice when they're observations on this why has been generally to this this fix it up and they do. And then it's completely working against that's been another again going back to the ownership of the project the citizen sciences. In the presentation we had she beating the sensors. Yeah. We've got an upward facing spectrometer and a bird lands on the sensor, you know, do what they do and then covers the sensor so again, citizen scientists going around checking that sensor that windows clear and giving it a good clean every time they go around as just helps. Did you have to have duplication in the census to ensure. So if something goes wrong you can sort of see that it's gone wrong or how do you deal with spotting errors like that. I guess it's just with analyzing the data to be honest there's no real real time there is with the, like if the census only stops working you'll, you will see it because we monitor every morning we have a script that comes through and saying is it okay well how many sensors are working which ones aren't. And but individual sensors within the unit, like the spectrometer, you have to really at the moment analyze the data doesn't come through near real time. The moment that sort of thing, but that's a good point. We've had met stations with tipping rainfall gauges and one one of them stops the other one doesn't you realize that there's something wrong and then you go and realize that one of them is full of leaves you know. Sometimes you have to have that duplication. Yeah, yeah. The duplication is across the tree scape in that sense in that for example with the spectrometer for windows blocked you'll see a big drop in transmission in just one sensor whereas if it's cloudy days you drop in transmission and all of the or no light levels in all of them so we can. We can unpick a lot of that based on where one sensor is a very clear anomaly for a short period something rather than a long term trend. Are you using Laura one or 5G or how are you getting the data out of the woods. It's worth using comes, it's right a SIM card so it's not even 5G I think it's just a GSM network. I use Laura to talk to the hubs. Yes. So that's the biggest issue is when a hub goes down, because you lose all 25 sensors transmitting the data. Then you get a gap. You can retrieve the data because each individual sensor has memory inside the sensor but it means a manual download, which means going out and on screen. It's quite time consuming so that that has been an issue with the hubs but as soon as you replace one it's it's it's absolutely fine you do the manual download. Barbara if I could turn to you I mean we've heard some very interesting anecdotes about the relationship formed with the tree wardens and the. We've heard some photos of the training sessions you've done and we've heard about these batteries being changed but I'm just interested really because the the role of people in in the in this project has been really quite key it seems and maybe if you could just talk us through that a little bit more and you know what what what the interfaces between people and technology and a project like this and what what can we learn learn from that. Yeah, as I said as we heard an integral part of this project is working with citizen scientists in this case the tree wardens. And I think it's been quite a steep learning curve for us at the beginning so while volunteers is obviously one state called a group there is naturally a lot of diversity in terms of the individual backgrounds, which meant that some were actually very comfortable with different aspects of the technology so for example we heard this multiple times now and you've just mentioned it as well. Initially the team was planning to do all the battery changes themselves but actually the volunteers were more than happy to help with this so not learning is that sort of discussions like that always benefit from just being a discussion directly with the volunteers. And yeah so at the back of this as well then there was an update to the app, which you've seen in Paul's presentation which made it possible for the volunteers to monitor the battery status themselves and similarly. Same similar elements which the tree warden started doing their own spreadsheets to record which trees that they've looked at. And again, that was something that was then integrated into the app and made it easier for them to coordinate their trips. And yes, all the volunteers were just really interested in what the technology could do and could offer and what the outputs looked like. Initially we or at least I wasn't sure about exactly why the volunteers might have wanted to join this particular project and whether they might want to use the data outputs for themselves it actually became clear that in general there wasn't as much interest in the detail that integrated off the data but rather that it delivered something exciting new science that could help contribute to keeping our woodlands healthy. So there was definitely a lot of interest in finding out about how this process is going, whether the data is delivering what we thought it would deliver or what we wanted it to deliver. And yeah so the technology gave the project an interesting new aspect that was worthwhile contributing to. And there's also clear desire right from the start to find out about the legacy of the project and how the outputs would be used. And I think that's also highlighted by just a continued interest in just maintaining the tree talker network beyond the project and one tree warden even purchasing and deploying their own tree talkers. So, it was, it's all really good stuff. In terms of the general public there was wasn't as much engagement and there was never any plan to. So the project team team did put up signs along with a tree talkers just with a little bit of background and an email contact email to get in touch with. And it has encouraged or at least contributed to probably one dog walker actually wanting to find out more signing up as a tree warden and joining the project team and I think as well whenever the team was doing maintenance or anything similar down there they got quite a few questions from interested passes by as well. Yeah, so you did have some dog walkers commenting on the, on the, on the. And as a question I think perhaps for for you Bob and indeed Rachel. What one on the sort of the people on the technology side I'm just intrigued by the, the level of engagement that you had you clearly had a lot of people Barbara who are very interested these wardens are very intrigued by what you're doing and interested to take part. So what would you say if to yourself if you are starting again other particular learning points about how you approach these, these, these colleagues and how you integrated them into the project what are the learning points of how you've dealt with them. I think. Yeah, please and I'm right so afterwards that. I think it's one of it was just keeping them informed because it's as that before they weren't necessarily to bother about the exact details but they were really interested in finding out sort of what the project was achieving. And I think at times we probably have left it quite long just because we were setting up the project we were trying to deal with different things, but it's just making sure that we just kept them in or keep them in a loop and that they sort of, they know that things are moving things are ongoing and that what they are doing is contributing to the project until the outputs. Rachel sort of a similar question really just in terms of the placing of the technologies and the sensors and so on. You know what are there any particular learning points you would you would reflect on over the over the project. The tree talk as we always knew we'd have a challenge and there's only so many treat all because we could deploy in and demonstrate a project for the first time. But coverage of therefore of the different species within the woodland and the health status is perhaps meant there's not as much replication as we might like across all of those groups. I'm not sure necessarily there's an ideal solution to that other than a, you know, a larger project with a bigger scope and a bigger, bigger budget but I do think there's an issue around, you know, how do we choose to deploy these where do we put them and part of the project was to try to come up the answers to that so we knew we didn't have them up front. I think the other thing perhaps is because of the interaction with the tree ones and because we were aligned on them for batch changing and so on that did somewhat limit where we could put the tree talkers so we did actively avoid for obvious reasons trees that were extremely unhealthy and we're at that far end of the health status scale because we couldn't have tree ones interacting with trees we actually thought were likely to be a health hazard to them. I think that's limited the range of data to some extent. I'm not sure if it's necessarily means I do anything differently in that respect we obviously wouldn't pick really dangerous trees to get the tree ones look at now either. And but I think maybe we think about some alternatives to try to capture some of those more extremely unhealthy trees within the woodland. I think otherwise, and some of that relate perhaps having a site a little closer to to fairer where they could go more readily to to change batteries of a small group of trees themselves or teller. I think the other thing was probably around the drone acquisitions I mean the sort of challenges there in terms of having to do them within a limited time limited field campaigns that means sometimes it was sub optimal lighting conditions and so on but in the most part that's that sort of worked all right I think. So a bigger network more tree talkers ball species captured or focusing in on a single species and just looking at that for the demonstrator in the first place perhaps. And one of the, one of the aspects of these demonstrator projects John, to come to you is the sort of translational aspect of the of the work and I'm actually looking at thank you Laura Kelly for posting the question about you mentioned data from the survey of ash dieback disease to parameterize models and to what extent you think signs of poor health from a specific threat such as ash dieback disease would be predicted predictive of general good or poor health and trees, or my trees display their unhealthiness in different ways and I think maybe I could just ask, ask you that and in answering, of course the differ and another key policy makers in the country who are trying to address some of these challenges. How can the work that you've done inform inform that that sort of translational piece as well. If I could just before I answer that one Stephen and I will if I could just one of the key factors in relation to the previous question. One of the you asked about learnings one of the key learnings for me of the whole project was the ability of the project team. And there's a there's a really interesting thing of when hard science hits the real world. If you had if we'd gone with the original plan it probably wouldn't have developed the amount of data and the resources that it did. And it was because the project team adapted and flexed and did things that weren't pure science but as Paul said in his introduction, we had a walk in the woods in September just to get to keep the community engaged. And that ability to flex and adapt was for me the main learning that came out of it, because without that we wouldn't have got half the engagement half the data half the results that happened so I think that thing that we should all bear in mind when we're doing these things the technology is brilliant, but it only works if you get the people to to engage with it. And then flipping the flipping that round into then how do we use the data that we've gathered to influence policy. Well obviously ashtabak is one of one of DEFRA's main concerns at the moment we tree counselor heavily involved in those conversations at policy level, and and helped guide local authorities to developing their management plans which is why the team wanted to have the conversation. So we've all the way through this project we've been connecting the policy, though the sorry the science to the policymakers and using the information to have the conversations to keep the to keep the conversations going. And, and that is critical if you're there is that element of real science is fantastic for and of itself. But if it's to have a policy impact you've got to be able to build the interface to build that. So the project teams need to have that capacity to interact with the policymakers so that. So the output of the work actually reaches people. I'm afraid it's, it's one of the academic world's biggest problems is that we do all this work when we produce some very nice dusty paper in some very nice dusty journal and nobody ever sees it. So, so one of the things that we need to do is to ensure that we translate all of the good science for the policymakers so that they get what they need to be able to use it in a way that that actually means it has impact. I, we haven't got to the point in this project where we've got the real data the X is coming because that's part of the next part of that, but the analysis of the data will be fed into all the policy conversations, because that that was always the point. But you have to have the channels and you have to have the opportunities and every project that you've got in the bundle of projects that you've done just needs to find those, those ways to get their information. So that's what policymakers but it won't be through always through academic publication. It needs to have webinars like this it needs to have sessions and Barbara's got Barbara's got policy workshops planned when we get to the, you know, to the to the data. So all of that will help to use this in a very positive way. Yes. So, Barbara, I mean, I'm just interested in how you've gone about engaging with all the different stakeholders that you've that are relevant for for this area, what, how are you going about that? I guess, sorry, I was still with the john's policy question because, as john said we've got a workshop planned sort of at the end of the project we were hoping to do that a bit sooner. And as I was already mentioned that there's obviously while policy teams have shown a lot of interest already. They've started asking questions and understandably so quite targeted questions. So, yeah, because this project is very much a scoping project it made more sense after discussions once we've got a firm idea about the shape and implications of the data, and just to add as well that for that policy workshop we're also hoping to invite other state called the national rail. So it's big stakeholder groups with an interest in tree health as well so yeah, watch this space. In terms of the other activities again, these things have already been mentioned in addition to the ongoing project work with with our tree warden group. That's the ongoing tree health assessments the technology maintenance sharing their experiences. We also had a local workshop in Norfolk which split into two parts. So one was for the wider tree warden groups on networks to share how the project's going and also to explore what the level of interest might be from these other groups and there was actually lots of positive engagement and people actively thinking about what this could mean to their individual communities and what barriers that might we might need to overcome. And yeah so that was later followed up then as well by a wide even wider survey on the motivations for citizen science. And the second part of this particular workshop was a walk through the woods and on site showcasing off the technology. And again this was very well received, especially by the county council other representatives working with parks highways, education. engagement there. Something else that came through the county council was a request from the museum service, I think, which led to the tree talk or a tree talk of being displayed in there from access access I can pronounce this to a corns exhibition. And it's also being used as an example on Christian thorns BBC radio Norfolk show tomorrow so just a little bit of advertising there for that as well. It's an element of this project and reached out got got publicity got people interested got people talking. And it's because it was vested in the community the community. So Norfolk radio probably doesn't care about the internet of things but it does care about the fact that the community have helped with the internet of things. It's, it's that element of community buying. And I don't know, all I know we've, we've got a little bit of video I don't know if this is the point where we could just show how the community truly engaged with this because I think hearing it. We've talked about citizen scientists but to hear it from their, from their own words. Hello, my name is Anna Rodriguez. I've been a tree warden for just over a year now. I have no background or previous experience dealing with trees. And soon after I started as a tree warden, the Sentinel project came up. And it's been a really good way of meeting a lot of the other tree wardens in my network. So much on the Sentinel project from experienced tree wardens, especially about how to assess the health of trees, but also basics like tree and plant identification and overall woodland health. It's been very exciting to be involved with this Sentinel project. It's a really big project, gathering lots of data. And we're now seeing how that data is actually being used to obtain new information on how to assess tree health. It's also been really great spending time in the woods and deliberately looking at the trees and spending time with other like-minded people. It's been easy to have you found that the interface, John, between the science and policy, easy to find or is it always an ongoing challenge? There is a huge amount of interest in DEFRA in basing policy on science. They want science. They want policy to be science-led. So any information that's available to them that is packaged and presented in a way that is useful and helpful and gives them what they need is to be desired. And there are many sister projects that are paralleling this work that is joining up the capacities from this project to share its resources. So there is plenty of opportunities to make the links. And as Barbara said, the fact that people want to come to workshops to hear what's been done and want to hear about how we're going to engage it, there won't be problems in getting the information into the policymakers. So I know DEFRA are very keen on evidence-based policymaking. So here is one excellent source of evidence that could be fed into that process. Exactly. So just looking back over the project, Paul, constructing a digital environment, have you constructed a digital environment? What strides have you made in that area? What are the challenges, I suppose, that remain in conducting this sort of research? Yeah, I think we've been successful in demonstrating a digital environment, using environmental sensors wirelessly, and then also integrating that with citizen sciences observations. I think it's been very successful in that point of view. There are challenges remaining. There's network connectivity challenges that the noise in the data is a bit of a challenge, how we overcome that. There has been new hubs released by Nature4, new sensors, so that might help with that a little bit, going back to that technology changing and developing all the time. Another challenge, as I mentioned before, is the expense of data, expense of remote sensing data, so extrapolating these sensor networks, these observations to satellite observations, and then using these central treescapes as almost like weather stations. You have one extrapolate between with remote sensing, have another one. But it's the expense of that data and the availability of that data. Another thing is the huge amount of data that you record. These sensors are recording, they've started on an hourly basis, multiple, multiple data streams an hour for 18 months. We've knocked that down to three hourly just because of the battery life. But it still is a huge amount of data. And how do we bring those data streams together to create a robust baseline and remove that short term noise. And so, are we measuring the things we can measure digitally? Is it correct? Are we measuring the right things? We have sensors given to us saying they measure this, this, and this, but is it the right tech? Are the things that we're missing and bringing in the multidisciplinary aspects of project teams is key to that, to get it right. And it's a challenge of this project. We may be missing an area in the plant physiology, the actual tree physiology. We've got a little bit of knowledge missing in that multidisciplinary aspect that going back to lessons learned, we would have incorporated that in the beginning. Yeah, I was going to come back to the, you know, we've talked about the technology, the policy links, the stakeholders, the tree ward and so on. But how about you guys as a team that the addressing these things, as you say, is a multidisciplinary interdisciplinary challenge and how have you all worked as a team? How did you set out to address this complex? I mean, you've mentioned that maybe there's some skills that could have been added to the mix. How's it worked out? Well, it's been great. I mean, we're not new to working with each other, the main core team you see on the call here. We have links with the tree council from DEFRA funded projects, myself and Rachel have worked together for a number of years on different projects in the tree skate. And we have bought in new collaborators, Michael from the sensory ecology and hydrology, bringing in that ecological knowledge and learning that sits in science. And, you know, he's been in one of these webinars before and you can see his knowledge and sits in science so that has been extremely beneficial. Yeah, there's been some really great, great discussions on that. I mean, I think there's time for one, one last question, which is something that's intriguing me and maybe Rachel this is one for you and there's been a lot of discussion in the demonstrated projects and in the I'm going to provide a CD program about digital twins. And what, you know, what the role of a digital twin is in trying to help manage and understand look at different scenarios for the future. Do you think you're, you know, this this project is moving towards a digital twin other other things that should be done to what's your take on on digital twins having having done what you've done. So, you know, a digital twin is going beyond measurements and into the ability to model and simulate and test out what future scenarios would look like based on that digital data so I think within the project we have some rich data sources that could integrate digital twins we're starting to look at how we could integrate those predict tree health but I think in terms of a true forest conditions sort of digital twin one that can let you experiment with changes in future climate and what effect that will have for example, you really need to go beyond the measurements and start to see how can we integrate some of these remote sensing observations into that of things observations into forest models that can tell us how the trees are going to respond to that and those models exist in many cases along history of forest models of course and many of them are physiologically based in some form, so have the capability to take these data streams but there's a sometimes disconnect between the types of parameters those models use and those that lend themselves to for example being derived from remote sensing so you know a lot of traditional forest models would be based on the diameter of the trunk whereas remote sensing there's things like the height and the ground size more readily so I think there's work to do there I think one challenge is bringing these things together the digital data side with the the modeling community to really build models that work. It's been great work in that direction already I think there's lots of technologies we're maybe not using in this project but that can build forest models lidar and grab my side scanning for example to reconstruct the sort of forest structure and so on. I think if those, you know, they're being brought together increasingly I think we're not that far off in this context from being able to produce these kind of digital twins that could help us to explore those interactions between different stresses so I think at the sort of siloing a bit you know we've got ash by back we've got drought stress but actually how are those interacting what would we expect the impact on tree health to be when we have both drought stress and a new pest and disease hitting at the same time for example. The challenges though I think remain the speed of change I mean not least in terms of new pests and diseases arriving for example and new stresses to the treescape arising. But also in the technology pace of change so even since we started this project there's new tree talkers available you know we can we can upgrade the system already. Which is quite a challenge I think to keep up with that if you like and the other big challenge the funding streams we need long term funding covering multiple sites which lets us deploy these kind of technologies to build up the data that's needed to produce a true digital twin of these kind of environments. To support those projects of course one needs the demonstrators first to show you the value and. Well that's been fantastic I think I think that's with that last comment on digital twins will, if we may just bring things to a close now looking at the time. Thank you so much for that it's really fascinating to hear about that project, and also it's wonderful to sort of hear about this project in the, in the context of the other demonstrated projects that are running and many of the challenges that that you're facing are actually ones that are. are clearly ones that other other folks have grappled with as well. So, thank you very much to all the panelists today and thank you very much for the audience has been a very interesting discussion all about the way that digital environment practices and principles are put into place for solving environmental challenges. It's been a good good series that we've had in this webinar, the video for this as with all our other ones will be available on our YouTube channel, and there's a link in the in the chat coming up on that. YouTube.com at the digital environment, you can have a look at look at this video which will be shortly available, and the other ones and we now look forward to the next series of webinars in the construction of digital environment, where we're going to focus on a bit more on the the science around artificial intelligence and machine learning in in environmental science. And we'll start that seventh webinar series on 31st of March Friday the 31st of March, three weeks time and we'll receive a keynote for that from Professor David topping from the University of Manchester. I'll be speaking about AI and environmental sciences from research developments to underlying infrastructure and policy implementation and I'm sure, like me or you'll be looking forward to hearing the professor topping speaking about that. So once more thank you so much to the panelists to the audience, and I wish you a good rest of the day. Thank you very much.


The province feels very strongly that fracking is safely regulated in British Columbia, and we continue to implement leading sustainable practices. And as I mentioned, we are very proud of the regulations and oversight that we have by the BC Oil and Gas Commission. But there is always room for improvement. Industry continues to be attentive, and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers is announcing plans to improve hydraulic fracturing practices in Canada, as well as supporting the voluntary disclosure of the chemicals that are used. My government applauds this move, this leadership that the industry is showing. And we're going to go a step further. On behalf of Minister Coleman, I'm pleased to announce that soon BC will launch an online registry that will disclose details about hydraulic fracking and about the additives that are used. The information will be accessible to anyone who wants to see it. Openness and transparency, they will prove to the critics that BC's regulations are working, and that our industry here is as responsible as any can be. It is time to show everyone how safely this business is done. The website is planned to get up in January 2012. I believe that we will come out of this economic uncertainty stronger than we were before. And everyone in this room has an important job to do in helping us get there. Helping us build a British Columbia where families have opportunities to put food on the table for their kids, where families have the chance, because they have an income, to build those good citizens that are going to build a great country, a country that we love.