MUD® SAR

MUD® (Mapped Underworld Dimension) SAR is Auracle Geospatial's satellite radar analytics service for modelling and monitoring conditions below the ground surface and under water. Operators of mines and tailings facilities, rail networks, pipelines, water systems and landfills often know little about subsurface conditions such as water courses, voids, faults or soil saturation, and visual inspections or point-based surveys can miss the changes that precede a failure.

Auracle processes Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite imagery, including Sentinel-1 and RADARSAT-2 data, with proprietary algorithms that, according to the company, remove the noise and data voids of standard InSAR and raise ground resolution to 1.6 m with Sentinel-1 and 0.2 m with RADARSAT-2. Auracle states that the method images structures to depths of 100 m. Outputs include 3D subsurface point clouds used as digital twins, change-detection and ground-displacement models, soil-saturation maps, fracture-density and resistivity models for mineral exploration, continuous land and lake-bottom elevation models (CSEM), landfill airspace volumes, and maps that rank geohazard risks for response. For landfills, Auracle also markets MUD® SAR Emission Analytics, which it says locates and quantifies surface methane emissions and links them to subsurface conditions. Customer data such as LiDAR, drill logs, geochemistry and geophysics can be fused into the models. No equipment, probes or sensors are installed on site.

Published case studies include target generation for Alerio Gold's Tassawini gold project in Guyana, where the work extended the known deposit and identified two new targets, and anonymised projects for a railway company and a pipeline operator.