A small Nottingham-based company that uses radar satellite data to measure tiny changes in ground height, including on peatland and around infrastructure.
Terra Motion is a small UK company that processes satellite radar data to measure how the ground moves over time, sometimes by only a few millimetres a year. Its software, called APSIS, uses radar images from satellites such as Sentinel-1, RADARSAT and the RADARSAT Constellation Mission, together with AI and machine learning. Unlike older methods that work best in towns where there are buildings to measure, its technique is designed to work in fields and forests, where it has been hard to measure movement. Uses include monitoring subsidence (ground sinking), checking infrastructure and finding the carbon potential of peatlands.
The technology comes from the University of Nottingham, where researchers developed a form of satellite radar measurement called InSAR (interferometric synthetic aperture radar), and Terra Motion holds a licence for it. Andy Sowter, chief technical officer, said of the problem: 'Nobody has come up with a solution for fields and forests.' A directory lists the company as founded in 2015. We could not find who the founders were, and we found no formal mission statement, so we have not invented one. It produced a UK-wide ground motion map in 2018 under licence.
Terra Motion is based in Nottingham, according to a trade news article and a company directory. The directory lists only four employees, so it is a very small team. In one project funded through the national SPRINT business support programme, the company and the University of Nottingham tested ways to monitor land movement on UK peatlands, using GPS-type satellite positioning data to check the radar results. About 10% of UK land is peatland and, as the article says, up to 80% of it is degraded, so measuring change matters for restoration. In October 2022 the company also opened Terra Motion Canada near Ottawa with a partner, which means it works internationally even though the UK team is small.
Little has been published about culture or day-to-day working, so we cannot report on it. What we can say is that a company with only a handful of staff, linked closely to a university, is likely to give people broad exposure to science, software and customers. Its Canadian president, Ken Chadder, has described infrastructure monitoring as a focus area, and the company has also described applications including spotting hazardous earthworks and signs of modern slavery, which shows how varied the uses of the data can be.
The kinds of work here include radar remote sensing scientists, software developers, data scientists, and people who explain results to customers in infrastructure, conservation and government. Subjects that fit include geography, physics, maths, computing and environmental science. It is one of the smallest companies in this group, so the website and recent news are the best sources for what it is doing now.
Website: www.terramotion.co.uk
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