Advancing Geospatial Intelligence at Pen Yr Englyn

Our Dave Capstick and Sean Blaney recently went on a site visit to South Wales to visit Pen Yr Englin a coal spoil tip in the Rhondda valley. Our Applied Technologies department are currently working at this location as part of an ongoing project.

In June, we deployed our award-winning UAV Multiband Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) system over the site and have since been processing and analysing the resulting datasets. The outputs are providing an unprecedented level of intelligence about the structure and condition of this complex feature. We were also delighted to present our findings to key regional stakeholders, including the Welsh Government, Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council, Natural Resources Wales and the Mining Remediation Authority.

Many organisations provide excellent survey solutions using Satellite InSAR and UAV LiDAR technologies, offering insights into ground movement, topography, and environmental conditions. Central Alliance has taken this capability a step further by integrating Satellite InSAR, LiDAR and using our unique proprietary UAV Multiband SAR technology into a single, comprehensive geospatial intelligence platform.

The fusion of these complementary datasets generates a significantly deeper understanding of both surface and subsurface conditions. While Satellite InSAR provides temporal soil moisture and deformation data, our Multiband SAR technology adds a distinctive functionality of penetrating vegetation and imaging into the subsurface in both soil and hard rock environments.

With spatial resolutions of 10-20 cm, our award-winning system can detect, delineate and model features that are simply not visible using conventional survey techniques. This enables the rapid generation of detailed 3D soil moisture tomographic models, spoil tip and bedrock interface characterisation, drainage and surface deformation assessment and biomass distribution analysis.

By combining these datasets, we provide clients with high-resolution, ground-truthing intelligence that extends well beyond traditional mapping and survey outputs. This innovative technology has already been successfully deployed across multiple sectors including mining, transportation, agriculture, forestry, and environmental management. In each case, it is helping organisations reduce uncertainty, better understand asset conditions, improve risk management and make more informed operational, maintenance and investment decisions.

At Central Alliance, we are not simply delivering survey data. We are providing actionable surface and subsurface intelligence that reduces risk, improves engineering efficiency, and supports better decision-making for critical infrastructure and environmental assets.