CDM Smith launches Sky Wave, a comprehensive solution for environmental challenges

BOSTON – CDM Smith proudly announces the launch of Sky Wave™, the firm’s newest trademarked offering, created to assess and solve envi­ron­men­tal challenges in restoration, remediation, and water resources. Brought together through a digital pipeline developed by a multidisciplinary team of experts, Sky Wave combines drones, remote sensing, and machine learning to solve complex environmental problems.

The service is led by envi­ron­men­tal scientist Brendan Brown, who has assembled a team of scientists, geologists, remote sensing scientists, artificial intel­li­gence engineers, and FAA-certified drone pilots to obtain site-specific answers and solutions. “The solutions to envi­ron­men­tal challenges of tomorrow require multi­dis­ci­pli­nary teams,” Brown said. “Through Sky Wave, we are able to bring together the brightest minds to push the boundaries of what is possible.”

By bridging the gaps between data collection, management, processing, and analysis, protecting natural resources and wildlife areas has never been more accessible. “This array of data from advanced sensors is collected directly into the hands of our technical staff,” said Karen Kelley, manager of research and development at CDM Smith. “This generates a wealth of new spatial data that can help inform our technical analyses.”

Sky Wave helps overcome the most common project challenges, such as incomplete site knowledge, time-consuming and expensive data collection, over­whelm­ing volumes of data, and field worker safety concerns. “These tech­nolo­gies have completely revo­lu­tion­ized the assessment of envi­ron­men­tal conditions. What would take field crews weeks to collect, we can cover in a day with a drone. Data that would take weeks to process, we can analyze in hours with machine learning,” said Brown. “All this leads to complete site knowledge to develop better solutions.” 

The Sky Wave team has pioneered these tech­nolo­gies to streamline envi­ron­men­tal monitoring services with patent pending data collection methods. “Whereas once we might have had to send a field team out for several days or weeks to collect a handful of data points at only a few select locations, now we can generate compre­hen­sive, repeatable, and less biased data coverage in the same or less amount of time,” said Kelley.

CDM Smith is a privately owned engineering and construction firm providing legendary client service and smart solutions in water, environment, transportation, energy, and facilities. Passionate about our work and invested in each other, we are inspired to think and driven to solve the world’s environmental and infrastructure challenges.