As a soil physicist working as a geotechnical engineer in the mid 1990’s,
Dan Rooney had a vision of changing the way soils were mapped by miniaturizing geotechnical tools that were being used for engineering applications. Dan returned to school for his Ph.D. to execute this vision under the internationally recognized environmental biophysicist Dr. John Norman who was instrumental in helping to understand how to convert this new type of sensor data into never before available soil information. In 2002, Dr. Rooney founded
Soil and Topography Information (STI) and under his guidance a team of experts including computer programmers, soil scientists, and geostatisticians spent over 100 man-years developing the
Soil Information System (SIS) as a tool to derive complete, 3D, soil data. Prior to the existence of SIS it was not possible to do precise, detailed, large scale mapping of the Earth’s top 4 feet of soil.
In 2005, John Deere Inc. purchased and controlled the exclusive rights to the technology in commercial agriculture. STI still served as the deploying entity of the SIS for John Deere in agricultural applications worldwide while STI continued to do research projects with the SIS for the Department of Defense (DOD), United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and numerous environmental and infrastructural commercial applications. Due to eventual restructuring at John Deere, STI repurchased the commercial rights to SIS and is now in the position to advertise and apply the approach directly to the market, including vineyards in California and other parts of the United States and world.
In 2010, STI added new executives to the team to launch the next phase of expansion for STI. Professionals with high-level backgrounds in the technology and innovation fields - including Dave Vaughn, Gary Fischer, and Dave Shrigley – are leading a new period of growth for the company.
Soil and Topography Information has processed over 20,000 acres in over ten countries including: the United States, Italy, France, Spain, China and Morocco.