“The most environmental square metres are those we don’t build”
The Gentian service promises to revolutionise the surveying industry. With support from the European Space Agency, we work on the cutting edge of remote sensing and machine learning, leveraging the power of artificial intelligence to deliver rapid and accurate solutions for clients working in the built environment.
We see our work as continuing in the green shift that began to transform the built environment with the recognition of the importance of urban biodiversity in the Kyoto Protocol. Our cost and time savings enable clients to maximise their environmental contribution and integrate green infrastructure across their portfolios.
The remote nature of our service preserves discretion, and is suitable for enforcement action, and avoids ‘tipping off’ and having to negotiate with tenants. It consists of three products, with a further two in progress. All of our products are fully remote, and deliver substantial cost and time savings on traditional surveying methods.
GR ID: This product covers locating Buildings with existing Green Roofs. The product identifies Intensive, Extensive and Astroturf roofs. Additional outputs from this product incorporate details including heat maps of habitat density, overlays of existing data (e.g. for London, this would include the London Solar Map).
GR RF: This product covers the identification of roofs that are immediately suitable for Green Roof Retrofitting, based on building characteristics that identify load-bearing roofs of a suitable size and location.
GR BD: This product covers assessing various plant metrics on Green Roofs, including vegetation condition, Habitat categorisation, and species identification. This monitoring can be set automatically on a recurring basis.
All of our work comes with a report detailing statistics of interest and other salient information so that we can reach those with little or no familiarity with GIS mapping.
Our service is constantly evolving to better meet the needs of customers, and we are working on adding new products to meet identified demands that can be met with machine learning and remote sensing data. At present, we are building a product to map the mitigation effects of green infrastructure on stormwater flow, and another product to identify retrofit opportunities for solar panels by calculating installation cost and expected energy production.