Swiss golf and landscape architect firm Steiner & Partner is launching two new services in 2021, GolfView and TurfView.
GolfView is a new geographic information system (GIS) platform available exclusively to golf course operators to help organise course data and manage facilities more efficiently, whether for maintenance, visualisation or planning renovations.
“Golf courses are very demanding green recreation facilities. With large areas and often difficult environmental restrictions it can be a real challenge for golf clubs to keep a finger on all the surfaces that need attention. This system can bring all data together in one place and keep it up to date,” says Erich Steiner.
GolfView’s digital plans offer many advantages over traditional management, able to display layered maps such as orthophoto, grass surfaces, vegetation, water bodies, irrigation and drainage, paths and buildings individually or combined. With its various tools, GolfView can, among other things, measure lengths and areas, help to plan maintenance budgets, manage tree inventories or even record daily pin positions.
This GIS is a perfect tool for communication during meetings and presentations and greenkeepers can access their centrally managed golf course information from anywhere with a simple web browser. With this data at your fingertips, you can share environmental information with government or NGOs to show your environmental stewardship and see who is responsible for the management of each parcel of land. The key to golf course management in the future will be effective data management and it is important to recognise that the digitisation of this data is essential in our sustainability efforts. GolfView will help clubs move in this direction.
TurfView is another essential service available to anyone managing green surfaces. Orthophotos, 3D models, multispectral and thermal images are now the basis for many new construction, renovation and maintenance projects, and TurfView offers several possibilities to view your facility with the help of drones and different cameras.
Quality aerial photography allows a management team to see their facility from a bird’s eye view and with photos, maps and 3D models they can immediately know what the situation is at present, not just what was planned. This makes communication with management and staff much easier.
Remoting sensing is becoming an essential tool for golf clubs, football or public open space management. Flying the golf course with a multispectral camera allows managers and greenkeepers to measure the vitality of their green surfaces and therefore the possibility to view the golf course surfaces from a very different perspective. Drones and remote sensing technology such as multispectral and thermal cameras have the potential to detect symptoms of stress in turf grass before the damage becomes visible to the human eye.
Maintenance challenges such as compaction, shade, wet spots, pest infestation, wear and tear and nutrient deficiency become revealed through various vegetation indexes. If turf problems are detected at an early stage, it should be possible to strengthen the plants through mechanical procedures and biological inputs and ultimately reduce the use of pesticides and irrigation.