TECO Group SpA is a Chilean consulting company that focuses on the analysis, management and control of social and environmental risks that create uncertainty for development projects in almost every industrial sector - energy, mining, forestry, transportation, retail, real estate...

Sometimes this analysis, management and control of risk requires specialized computation. For example, a real estate client was concerned about "vegetation management issues" on a large land parcel planned for housing development. The planning group had developed the impression that the extant vegetation was unimportant and could be cleared without concerns. TECO's forestry experts visited the site and determined that it incorporated a significant presence of a high conservation value dryland tree species which had been previously mischaracterized as a commonplace and not valuable shrub. The forestry team surveyed the area and Nueva Consulting Group analyzed the results, which showed that the arboreal vegetation exceeded the minimum density threshold established by Chile's national forestry corporation for a dryland forest.

Nueva created a special-purpose data analysis utility for TECO, written in Java, that directly processed the samples and calculated the density and distribution of trees, their average height and diameter by diameter class in order that TECO could prepare a forest management plan for the client. With this plan in place, the planning group has incorporated the conservation of this native dryland forest as a striking feature of the proposed development.