New Zealand Applications & Partnerships
SatSense’s technology is already embedded in New Zealand’s national-scale land movement mapping. Working in partnership with Earth Sciences New Zealand (formerly GNS Science), they have created comprehensive ground motion datasets that cover the entire country.
Avant takes this high-precision dataset and applies local geology, soil science, and hazard records to produce LandSure reports and interactive dashboards.
SatSense’s monitoring starts with Sentinel-1 C-band radar imagery, which captures both vertical and horizontal ground displacement. These radar scans are then processed through proprietary algorithms designed to reduce noise and extract accurate movement patterns.
SatSense remains at the forefront of InSAR capability through ongoing collaboration with academic partners. This approach ensures constant refinement of their processing methods, enabling them to detect not only the presence of ground movement, but also changes in the rate of that movement.
This early-warning capability is critical for identifying slope failures, subsidence, and other stability risks before they become visible or cause damage.
SatSense remains at the forefront of InSAR technology through continuous collaboration with academic partners, ensuring their processing methods stay cutting-edge. They work to detect and detail specific changes in land-movement rate. This allows for early warnings for slope failures, subsidence, and other stability risks before damage occurs.
Available in New Zealand for Residential Civil & Planning
SatSense's technology converts satellite radar data into deformation time-series, which show subtle, long-term trends and rapid changes, that traditional surveys can often miss.
Proven Technology, Global Reach
With origins at the University of Leeds, SatSense’s algorithms are backed by decades of research and validated across hundreds of infrastructure, hazard, and asset monitoring projects on six continents.
Using the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 satellites, they revisit the same location every 6–12 days, detecting vertical and horizontal movement as small as ±2–5 mm/year. Historical archives extend back to 2014, giving a decade-long view of land behaviour.
Scalable, Accurate, and Actionable
Whether tracking subsidence at a single home, monitoring railway infrastructure across hundreds of kilometres, or surveying national-scale geological hazards, SatSense's technology provides the same millimetre-level precision and reliability.
This scalability makes comprehensive monitoring economically viable across projects of any size, from individual property assessments to country-wide hazard mapping initiatives.
Bringing SatSense to New Zealand
Avant is SatSense’s technology partner for residential projects in New Zealand. We combine SatSense’s high-precision ground motion data with local geology, soil maps, and hazard records, producing reports and dashboards tailored for New Zealand’s planning, engineering, insurance, and hazard management needs.
Matthew Bray
CEO
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Professor Tim Wright
Co-Founder | Director
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Professor Andy Hooper
Co-Founder | Director
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Karsten Spaans
Lead Engineer
Dr Jennifer Scoular
Head of Product
Dr Nick Dodds
Head of InSAR Solutions
Global Leaders in Ground Movement Monitoring
SatSense is the global authority in detecting and measuring ground movement in New Zealand, with millimetre precision, their aim is to make InSAR technology accessible and affordable.
Their advanced Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) technology turns satellite radar data into accurate, time-stamped movement maps. They provide historical and up-to-date monitoring data to show changes to the land, typically invisible with the naked eye