Brownfield redevelopment demands answers to hard questions: How contaminated is the site? Where should you sample next? How much will cleanup cost? Earth Volumetric Studio gives your team the tools to build defensible, data-driven 3D models of contaminated sites, reducing characterization costs with DrillGuide© technology, quantifying remediation volumes, and producing visualizations that satisfy regulators, judges, and the public.
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Gain a Competitive Edge
Cut Characterization Costs — DrillGuide© uses geostatistics to identify exactly where to collect your next samples. Spend less on drilling and fieldwork while achieving higher-quality site characterization — a direct cost savings on every brownfield project.
Accelerate Regulatory Approval — Defensible 3D volumetric models give regulators the complete picture they need to make decisions faster. Studio’s data-driven approach reduces review cycles and builds confidence in your site characterization and remediation plans.
Prevail in Litigation — In courtrooms where 3D models are now expected, environmental litigators cannot afford to present complex geochemistry with graphs and charts. Studio produces visualizations with the realism to win the jury’s minds and the statistical foundation to withstand rigorous cross-examination.
Quantify Remediation Volumes — Calculate contaminant mass, plume volumes, and excavation quantities in three dimensions. Studio’s volumetric calculations give you the precise numbers needed to plan cleanup strategies, estimate costs, and obtain accurate remediation bids.
Reactive Metals Inc. Superfund site — uranium-235 contamination modeled around facility buildings in Earth Volumetric Studio. Rotate, zoom, and double-click to probe data. View more examples →
DrillGuide© — Analytically Guided Site Assessment
Remediation cannot begin without proper site characterization, and the funds to perform assessment are always in short supply. For over 20 years, C Tech’s DrillGuide© technology has been used to quantify site uncertainty and determine where it is most efficient to collect additional samples, delivering the lowest-cost data collection and highest-quality characterization of site contamination.
Quantify Uncertainty — DrillGuide© uses kriging to analyze all available samples, computing both predicted concentrations and standard deviations across the site. It identifies locations where contamination is predicted to be high but confidence is low — the optimal place to sample next.
Optimize Sampling — Each DrillGuide© cycle selects the single most valuable sample location, creates a synthetic sample, and repeats. After 50 cycles, the deviation between confidence bounds is dramatically reduced — demonstrating measurable improvement in characterization quality.
The images below show a 2D DrillGuide© analysis of a site with diesel contamination. The surface is colored by concentration with three contour lines: the outer dark red line shows the largest the 200 mg/kg plume could be (80% confidence), the inner blue line shows the smallest, and the green line is the nominal plume. In a well-characterized site, these three lines would be nearly coincident.
Why Volumetric Modeling?
Contaminated sites are inherently volumetric: the data is collected at multiple elevations, the contaminants are distributed in three dimensions, and every remediation method operates volumetrically. Studio’s data-driven approach means the data creates the model: expert-system-driven geostatistics handle contaminant data spanning six or more orders of magnitude, producing defensible volumetric plume models without the guesswork of CAD-based drawing.
In the Field
There are thousands of contaminated sites worldwide where C Tech’s software has guided site assessment, aided in understanding contamination, and supported cleanup planning and execution, from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Hanford Site to small brownfield sites like corner gas stations and dry cleaners.
$16 Million Award for the City of Newburgh
First Environment Inc. used C Tech's software to model geology, coal tar contamination, and historic shoreline changes at a former manufactured gas plant site in Newburgh, New York, adjacent to the Hudson River. Three distinct 3D models, incorporating boring data, historic aerial photographs, NOAA and USGS records, were translated into dynamic animations that told a story easily understood by the jury. The animations supported expert testimony illustrating how coal tar migrated through permeable soil layers between the former plant and city property. The jury found the utility responsible for $16 million in cleanup costs.
"B. Tod Delaney was a key witness at the trial, and First Environment developed a number of trial exhibits, including an extremely effective computer-based graphic presentation (EVS model) that enabled the jury to visualize how wastes were migrating onto and across the City's property and into the Hudson River. Significantly, the jury asked to see this presentation a second time in its deliberations. First Environment's work was crucial to our success in obtaining a $16M jury verdict…"
The Industry Standard
C Tech’s software has been the tool of choice for brownfield characterization and redevelopment for over two decades. Our customers include the U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the majority of the world’s largest environmental and engineering consulting firms. From Superfund megasites to corner gas stations, Studio tackles the most challenging contaminated site projects in the world.
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