Our Core Mission: Protecting Lives and Livelihoods
Our company name in Japanese GENSAI is formed by two Japanese characters which translate to “Proactive Disaster Mitigation,” which is our main mission. We are experts in guiding underground and under-pavement maintenance and excavations with precise information, which is safer and less expensive than chasing problems and repairing accidents only after they occur.
In our home market of Japan, GEO SEARCH services are considered cost-effective, are widely available, and are utilized by the National Government, road agencies, private contractors, prefectures, and municipalities every day. They have become the peerless “best practices standard” in Japan’s GPR engineering services market, with over 90% market share and 12 regional offices to dispatch survey teams to any location in Japan within 12 hours of request.
GEO SEARCH teams are always busy in the field after earthquakes, typhoons, landslide incidents, etc., scanning roadways and other critical infrastructure for the unseen hazards which are created by these natural disasters.
In Japanese and overseas regions which are prone to develop under-pavement cavitations, proactive scanning and assessment by GEO SEARCH has reduced the number of sinkhole collapses in roadways by about 70%.
Municipalities and road agencies subscribe to GEO SEARCH services on a regular, programmed schedule, to proactively detect the under-pavement hazards created by aging underground utilities, unseen leaking water pipes or long-term seismic activity, before dangerous and expensive problems occur.
And in addition, GEO SEARCH underground utility mapping and bridge deck analysis services have established an exciting new global standard for speed, accuracy, and precision.
“Providing a service which benefits the society and the people of the USA”
Yukio Gotoh
President & CEO of GEO SEARCH Inc. (USA)
I’m excited to bring all of the proprietary GPR technology, the analytical power, the R&D capabilities, the A.I. algorithm programming expertise, and the enthusiastic field-work know-how of nearly 300 GEO SEARCH team members to the US market. While we have only been active here since 2022, we have already helped dozens of cities, road agencies and utilities uncover numerous under-pavement anomalies, which were verified as cavities; and we have also created dozens of Underground Utility Maps, highly accurate True Digital Twins which are useful for guiding actual field work, potholing and excavation – with several of these maps already helping cities and agencies meet accelerated construction timelines in anticipation of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic games.
In Japan, GEO SEARCH under-pavement anomaly detection is already part of the full menu of services used to maintain a safe and resilient road infrastructure. Here in the US, we would recommend that, prior to any new road repaving projects, under-pavement anomalies be assessed, verified, and repaired to avoid simply placing a new pavement surface on top of a weakened and compromised road structure. At GEO SEARCH, we make invisible hazards visible so they can be addressed before problems arise.
It’s also exciting to see how many agencies quickly understand the value of proactively addressing invisible hazards before they create problems for the public. We look forward to continuing the process of education on detecting and dealing with unseen hazards, and working with our colleagues in the US to help create a safer and more resilient infrastructure, at a lower long-term maintenance cost, as we have been doing in Japan and other markets for the past 35 years.
Feel free to reach out to myself and my colleagues at GEO SEARCH Inc., to discuss our experience and how we might bring the power of proactive disaster mitigation to your projects and activities, as well.
“Protecting Lives and Livelihoods”
Hiroshi Tomita
Founder and Chairman of GEO SEARCH
The protection of lives and livelihoods is at the very core of all our activities.
Our company has grown significantly since I started it, and it is still growing with expansion into overseas markets. And although we have over three decades of real-world contracts, wide experience, and invaluable field research under our belts, we completely embrace the spirit and freedom of a young “start-up” company, with new ideas from our talented team continuously pushing the envelope and challenging the status-quo in the global GPR services sector, with over a dozen patents supporting our own proprietary technologies.
GEO SEARCH began in 1989 with my own fascination about the potential of microwave GPR technology to make invisible underground objects visible. After huge sinkhole accidents in Japan, my new company started GPR inspections of roads and highways, finding underground cavities before they collapse. We created the first underground cavity detection service in the world, with good success.
And then early in our company’s history, I was approached by the United Nations representative in charge of the removal of landmines in former conflict areas, who had followed my research on detecting unseen objects with microwave GPR. He asked me to help in detecting tiny plastic landmines that saturated many former fields of war, injuring farmers, villagers, and even innocent children in many communities.
I agreed to help the many people who were in need and to support these de-mining efforts, which led to ten years of pro bono research and development leadership by GEO SEARCH together with our volunteer consortium of Japanese companies, all focused on this same important goal. Finally, we were able to deliver an accurate and reliable equipment-set to help detect tiny non-metallic landmines on the Thai-Cambodia border, and trained local villagers to become stakeholders in this process, and learn to clear their own farms.
While volunteering over four years, we ran across a historic site – the Preah Vihear Temple – which was older than Angor Wat, and took 300 years to build. With this discovery, I understood that this project is about restoring the culture and the economy of the region. If we make the area safe for people to visit, this is the best way to help.
By year 2006, we completed demining operations for over 1 million square meters – or about the area of 143 football fields. And we were happy to donate our equipment and know-how to empower the NGO we established and the people who are continuing the demining programs. And I was overjoyed when UNESCO registered the Preah Vihear Temple as a World Heritage Site in July of 2008.
The technology that we researched and developed purely out of curiosity led to the protection of people’s lives and livelihoods. I believe that this is my mission and my obligation to society.
And in that same spirit, we at GEO SEARCH work to assure the safety of the vital infrastructure, the roads, bridges, airport runways, or railway lines, that we all use every day. And as there are continuing trends toward relocating vulnerable overhead utilities, like electric power lines, safely underground, GEO SEARCH underground utility mapping has already been recognized as an important tool for avoiding the danger of unknown utility strikes, and accelerating project timelines while reducing costs.
The underground is really an invisible new frontier for humanity. But to master it, we need to learn to navigate the unknown underground world, to see its invisible hazards, and to proceed with new projects safely. Our company is prepared and ready to help, guide and assist.
“Inspired by the Desire to Help People: A Culture of Unrivaled On-site Competence and Capability”
Masatsugu Saika
President of GEO SEARCH, Co. Ltd. (Japan)
Our work of detecting underground hazards and buried objects is not well known to the public because we are dealing with things that cannot be seen. However, in the aftermath of the Great Japan Earthquake of 2011, the importance of proactive disaster mitigation became strongly recognized by the Government of Japan, as well as in other parts of the world.
In recent years, an increasing number of infrastructure owners have come to realize that the underground information we create is useful not only for disaster mitigation activities, but also for accelerating efforts to deal with aging infrastructure, speeding up construction timelines and reducing costs. Not only for underground projects, but also for roads, bridges, and other infrastructure that can be assessed with our technology.
GEO SEARCH’s strength is not limited to its powerful, proprietary technology. In the event of natural disasters or other incidents, we are called and dispatched to emergencies anywhere in Japan within 12 hours, and our talented team members tackle any situation with an unmatched culture of on-site capabilities, and a desire to help people.
These are the strengths that will let us respond flexibly to future developments, and this is the spirit of competence, precision, and unmatched capability that we are bringing to our overseas projects and collaborations – and with very positive results.
We look forward to joining forces with colleagues in the engineering and construction sectors who can share our vision and aspirations, and expand access to these services through open innovation, and the creation of an important new role and value for high accuracy GPR services that has not yet been fully realized in society.