Low-lying coastal cities are sinking while sea levels are rising — a recipe for disaster that has already pushed homes and neighborhoods around the country into the chronically flooded category. In San Rafael, immediately north of San Francisco, survey data reveal sections sinking at about half an inch a year — enough to put places like the Canal District several feet below their historic levels and that much more exposed during storms and king tides. One local entrepreneur believes the answer isn’t higher walls, but higher ground, and he’s building robots to raise the land itself.
A New Playbook for Urban Flood Resilience
Instead of building seawalls, which can cost hundreds of millions and project water onto neighboring communities, the startup’s approach will be to elevate the land itself. The company’s tracked, self-guided injectors bore small, parallel wells and shoot out a wood-based slurry 40 to 60 feet below the surface, incrementally raising subsided soils until streets and lots are returned to an elevation that can serve as a defense. The rigs work from a 20-foot containerized plant, driving around job sites with human operators on tap as a safety net.
Behind the scenes, a custom software program guides its way through underground layers using public geotechnical records and well logs, then optimizes injection patterns with a genetic algorithm. City planners will use a SimCity-style interface to shape target elevations, parcel by parcel; once the plans are set, they’re translated into routes and flow rates for the robotic fleet. It is alleged that block demolding on the plinth may be performed two hours per injection set, enabling blocks to be lifted in stages with minimum disturbance.
Why Cities Are Sinking and Facing Greater Flood Risk
Subsidence in the city is a combination of groundwater pumping, compressible fill, and the slow settling of peninsula bayland and delta sediments. Scientists at NASA and the United States Geological Survey have recorded hotspots throughout the country, from the San Joaquin Valley to portions of shoreline across the Bay Area. The peril is even more pronounced worldwide: dozens to hundreds of coastal cities could face land subsidence. “In the world’s coastal cities, land is sinking — and climate change will make it worse,” read another study published in Nature Climate Change.
Stack that on top of sea-level rise and the math is grim. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the nonprofit Climate Central have warned that about 300 million could be subject to regular coastal flooding by midcentury. In the United States, the American Society of Civil Engineers has warned that hard defenses alone would cost well over $400 billion this century, and they require ongoing upgrades as seas continue to rise.
Cost and Carbon Calculus for Land-Raising Projects
Its founder contends terraforming can offer protection at a fraction of the price of walls. A preliminary estimate for San Rafael: roughly $92 million to raise about 240 acres by four feet — high enough to make up for previous subsidence and four decades’ worth of floodplain. As the slurry is based on waste wood left to soak underground, the company also hopes to produce carbon credits, asserting that biomass will be stored safely and kept from reentering the atmosphere.
That premise will invite scrutiny. Market norms organizations like the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market and regulators such as the California Air Resources Board have increased scrutiny of permanence and monitoring. Demonstrating long-term carbon storage, quantifying moisture levels, and ensuring there are no unintended methane emissions will also be critical if project credits are used to reduce costs.
Seismic and Safety Questions for Earthquake Zones
Some are not persuaded that pumping in lightweight material is safe in earthquake country. Geotechnical specialists will insist on having cyclic triaxial and shear studies to know how the consolidated slurry actually behaves under seismic loads, and if it could indeed exacerbate soil liquefaction. The team argues that distributed ground-raising is more tolerant of some failure modes than tall dikes and seawalls, and it can be designed to improve site response.
Feasibility will also be driven by environmental factors. Both the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the California Coastal Commission usually demand rigorous impact studies, feedstock sourcing plans, groundwater protections, and post-construction settlement monitoring. The company says its robots have been in operation at a pilot site for more than a year, developing the data set required for permitting and third-party review.
From Pilot to City Scale: Funding and Deployment Path
The business model shares project revenue with civil contractors, turning the startup into a technology partner on city-led capital upgrades. Near-term targets are neighborhood-scale elevations connected with stormwater retrofits, and uses in wetland restoration, where subsidence and sea-level rise are drowning marshes that protect against storms. Funding might come from FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program or the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and state climate resilience budgets, if successful results stand up to peer review.
Ultimately, the company’s pitch is at once personal and pragmatic: the ability to empower cities to carve out their own topography rather than ceding it to the sea. In places like San Rafael, where costly seawalls are politically and financially unattainable, robots that raise the ground could provide a middle path — so long as science, seismic performance, and community confidence can be built block by lifted block.