PETE KELSEY: The Alcatraz project was for the National Park Service here in the United States. The objective at the outset, at the beginning of the discussion, was to create a baseline survey of the entire island.
All the structures inside and out that could be used as a baseline that all future surveys could be measured against. So, the genesis of the project was really about establishing a baseline survey that could be used for change detection going forward because Alcatraz – it’s a lot of things – but I think what most people don’t understand is that it’s a very dynamic environment.
The Park Service was keen to mention climate change, sea level rise, the effects of over a million visitors per year. It’s right in San Francisco on the San Andreas Fault, so it’s seismically active. There’s a lot of things going on that present challenges to what’s arguably the most notorious prison on earth.
So, they were very keen to get that baseline survey done. From there, the conversation changed into all sorts of interesting and creative ways that this kind of reality capture digital twin type data can be repurposed. That was the Genesis. 
JEREMY SOFONIA: The original idea of the project was to create this 3D model, a virtual tour, for the National Park Service to put content in a digital space online so that people could come and see and visit Alcatraz virtually.
And there are several benefits to that, notwithstanding the ability to get into places that are normally off limits. There are plenty of places, because of the state and the condition of the buildings, that it’s completely impossible to have tours moving through constantly. So this opens up more of Alcatraz to the greater public.

Emesent's solution delivers an analysis-ready heatmap of time displacement across an entire mine. This can then be easily combined with other geological and geotechnical information to determine the root cause analysis or why that change is occurring, such as lithology, structural interpretations, seismicity data, and numerical modelling results showing stress and plastic strain.

Currently, the primary method for monitoring change in underground mining is damage mapping, which involves annotating two-dimensional cross-sections of the mine to indicate areas of concern. Although this method allows for broad spatial coverage, it is inherently subjective and lacks precision. In contrast, tape or digital extensometers offer high measurement accuracy at discrete points. However, due to the heterogeneous nature of rock masses—whose properties can vary significantly across tunnels, drives, and cross-sections—these point measurements are not always representative of broader conditions. Advanced tools like total stations and fixed laser sensors provide high accuracy but are limited in spatial coverage.

Each of these traditional methods serves a purpose, yet they also come with trade-offs in terms of scale, frequency, and reliability. As a result, many underground mines struggle to monitor change effectively, potentially compromising both safety and profitability.