The Origin of Cambio: 25+ Years of Applied Earth Science

In an era of AI and machine learning, trust matters.

Cambio originated inside BGC, where internationally recognized geoscientists and engineers spent decades helping infrastructure operators manage landslides, erosion, flooding, seismicity, and other geohazards affecting pipelines, railways, roads, open pit mines, and dams.

Cambio’s foundation is applied earth science, but it is also a story of practical innovation. BGC began building digital geohazard tools long before “digital transformation” was a thing, driven by a practical need to help engineers organize hazard information, understand changing conditions, and support risk-informed decisions.

The company may be new. But the experience behind it was earned in the field.

Why Cambio was developed

In the late 1990s, many of the data sources engineers rely on today were not available. Critical information often lived in inspection reports, spreadsheets, and individual experience. Data collection was less standardized, making it difficult to compare observations over time or across assets.

BGC developed the first geohazard database platform in 1998 to help pipeline operators manage landslide and erosion risks. The early platform was built around geotechnical and hydrotechnical workflows. More than 25 years later, it still is.

That's important because in geohazard management, the structure of the data matters. How hazards are classified, how observations are linked, how inspections are tracked, how monitoring thresholds are interpreted, and how decisions are documented all depend on applied earth science experience.

Lessons from the field

The same practical approach shaped field data collection. Before mobile apps, BGC used local web forms on rugged laptops so teams could collect structured data on site and bring it back into Cambio.

But geohazard risk is rarely static. Slopes move, rivers migrate, groundwater conditions change, weather events alter terrain, and infrastructure ages. A field inspection captures conditions at a point in time. Managing risk requires understanding how those conditions change and whether that change affects an asset.

Across infrastructure sectors, geohazard-related incidents have shown the limits of fragmented information and periodic assessment. When ground or water conditions change, the consequences can include pipeline ruptures, transportation disruptions, environmental impacts, and risk to public safety.

The lesson is clear: documenting hazards is not enough. Teams need connected, current information to identify changing conditions early enough to act.

That need helped accelerate Cambio’s evolution from a system of record into a platform for understanding changing conditions.

From database to platform

As new data sources became available and digital tools matured, Cambio evolved from a geohazard database into a platform for managing monitoring and risk programs.

Cambio’s early value was bringing geohazard information together. That was important. A centralized system made it easier to find records, compare sites, preserve institutional knowledge, and document decisions. But storing data is not enough.

Teams needed a way to connect monitoring evidence and site knowledge to engineering tools that support day-to-day workflows: setting thresholds and alerts, reviewing time-series data, analyzing terrain change, cutting cross-sections, planning field work, tracking maintenance, and generating figures, maps, and reports.

Today, the Cambio platform has become a common operating environment for understanding what is happening, what has changed, what needs attention, and what actions have been taken.

What's next? AI with domain context

We know that machine learning can help identify patterns, detect change, prioritize review, and support probabilistic assessment. But in earth science, the key question is not only what changed; it is what that change means to operations.

That requires domain context.

Cambio’s foundation gives AI the context it needs: geotechnical and hydrotechnical understanding, structured field data, and decades of applied experience. With that foundation, teams can evaluate areas that are difficult, costly, or impractical to inspect using traditional methods alone.

The opportunity is to expand visibility across large infrastructure networks, identify where attention is needed, and give engineers better evidence sooner. Our goal is to extend the reach of proven methods, not bypass them.

New company, established foundation

Cambio Earth became an independent company in 2024 to scale the platform beyond its origins inside BGC Engineering. Thanks to that foundation, Cambio is used across pipelines, mining, transportation, and energy infrastructure to manage landslides, erosion, flooding, seismicity, tailings facility risks, and other ground and water-related hazards.

The platform is used to manage more than 667,000 kilometres of linear infrastructure worldwide and more than 350,000 hazard sites. Pipeline operators using Cambio have achieved a 10x reduction in geohazard-related pipeline failures.

That foundation matters as infrastructure faces more frequent extreme weather, aging assets, and changing ground and water conditions.

Cambio was built for that work: applied earth science, built into software that engineers can use to safeguard communities, infrastructure, and the environment.

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