Overview

Dublin-based company, Ambisense, specialise in environmental risk management. Their tools collect data on potentially dangerous gases such as cyanide and petrochemicals escaping from landfill, former gasometers and other sites. Their product, Ambilytics, trades links between gases leaching from the ground and their underlying cause.

The Challenge

The Ambilytics product was written in a language called ‘R’, and the company were five months behind taking it to market. Part of the issue was that although Ambisense had over €1M in funding, they were unable to find enough software developers in Dublin to address the problem.

They had tried outsourcing to offshore software developers in Poland and Malaysia. However, these other companies had admitted they would be unable to deliver this technically complex project in such a tight time frame.

The Process

We have significant experience in the geo-environmental sector, including winning a ‘Best Science & Laboratory Advancement’ award. After an initial introduction at a geo-environmental conference, we took on a leadership role on this product design brief.

Working intensively over two months, we used agile processes to prototype the site using wireframes. This was vital in ensuring our user-centered design was the best it could be.

The Solution

We developed a scalable, cloud-based ‘software as a service’ platform that harnesses artificial intelligence from field-based sensors, satellites, geological databases and other data sources. Now geotechnical consultants can take a live reading onsite, as well as measure, monitor and oversee landfill, vapours and other hazardous ground gases – all in real time. Using instruments in the field, satellites and other geotechnical devices, Ambilytics finds patterns and relationships in the resulting environmental data.

Ambilytics is vital for geo-environmental engineers and data scientists to identify probable outcomes based on the data that’s been collected. It’s also a key tool for landowners or developers who want to avoid building on contaminated land, with the potential for ill-health of residents and possible lawsuits further down the line.

The software automates what were previously laborious, low-cost processes, improving efficiency. This frees users up to make more informed decisions on the environmental risks associated with large industrial and infrastructure projects.