Pentagon-Backed Venture Aims for ‘Google Underground’

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Pentagon-Backed Venture Aims for ‘Google Underground’

* By Katie Drummond Email Author
* March 8, 2010 |
* 10:58 am |


The Department of Defense already has omnipresent eyes in the sky, underwater and, of course, on the ground. It’s only when you start going underground that the surveillance powers of the Pentagon begin to wane — at least until now.

Just last month, the Pentagon’s risk-taking research arm, DARPA, announced plans for a program called ‘Transparent Earth’. They’re spending $4 million this year on preliminary plans for a digital, 3D map that would display “the physical, chemical and dynamic properties of the earth down to 5 kilometer depth.”

But Geospatial Corporation is already doing it. The company, started in 2005 by longtime water-pipeline manufacturer Mark Smith, uses a proprietary gadget called ‘Smart Probe’ to map deep earth via underground pipes. The company’s probe can be inserted into pipes as small as 1 1/2 inches, and then travel their length while taking super-speedy coordinates — 800 per second — and saving them onto a USB key. The probe is removed, the data extracted, and a 3D map of the underground region is created. The probe can travel through pipes that are empty, or contain fluid or gas.

Geospatial got started by mapping telecommunication lines for cable companies, and has since moved on to mapping oil and gas lines, waterways and sewage tunnels. They’re also planning to map entire municipalities, to enable cheaper, faster fixes of infrastructure problems. Smith tells Danger Room that the company is creating a “mega-map” geographic information system (GIS) platform, called GeoUnderground. “Underground,” he says. “Is truly the final frontier.”

And the company’s growing a library of data has caught the military’s eye. The Pentagon has already contracted Geospatial to create 3D maps of the deep earth beneath their “critical facilities.” The data would be useful in case of terrorist attack, natural disaster, or, of course, a power outage or sewage leak.

Little surprise, then, that homeland security firms are also interested. Geospatial announced a partnership today with Ridge Global, a firm founded by former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, which “provides strategic and operational services that advance the security and economic interests of businesses and governments worldwide.”

[Photo: Geospatial Corporation]