Laurence Allen, founder and CEO of Terranova, explains why flooding and land subsidence are unsolvable with seawalls alone — and how his company is using underground robotics and woodchip injection to physically lift sinking land back up.
We explore the scale of the global subsidence crisis, why cities from Jakarta to Miami to San Francisco are running out of options, and what it would take to deploy this technology at city scale. If you're interested in climate resilience, infrastructure, real estate, defense technology, or the future of human engineering, this episode maps out a solution most people assumed was impossible.
In this episode:
Why seawalls fail against permanent sea level rise — and the coastal cities most at risk
How Terranova's robots inject woodchip slurry 60 feet underground to lift an acre of land by a foot in a single day
Why woodchips are cheaper than dirt and available at massive scale in flood-prone regions
How AI and machine learning are being used to map underground soil conditions and predict injection outcomes
The permitting landscape, groundwater safety, and why regulators have been surprisingly supportive
Terranova's current deployments, customer pipeline, and path to lifting entire cities
Defense applications: levee reinforcement, military base preservation, and the Army Corps of Engineers
Why this technology could unlock billions in stranded coastal real estate and solve California's water infrastructure crisis
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