Existing Solutions

ground water, hydrogeology, aquifers, vulnerability, climate change, hazard, risks, exploration, mineral water, water supply

technical

Solution to optimize using GIS and Earth observation, all stages of ground water management, from exploration to preservation.

The GOTHAA (Geologie Observation de la Terre pour l’analyse d’aquifère) as developped since the year 2000 to support exploration of new ground water resources using earth observation techniques.

The approach has been tested in various climatic, geologic, land use contexts in Argentina, Egypt, France, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Libya.

The integration of multiple Earth observation data from kilometric to metric ground resolution has been used to:

-characterise geology and hydrogeology, either with and without geophysical or drilling or wells data, with very limited field survey

- identify aquifers and water bodies

- map and assess the influence of land use and human settlement on resource infiltration and availability.

- map and assess the main water abstraction and water use, and map the area with risk of bad water balance.

- map and assess illegal extraction of water

- identify areas with risks of contamination by surface pollutant infiltration

- analyse indicators of shallow water presence and state of vegetation through contrasted seasons

- identidy threat put by climate change to a infiltration system and a captive aquifer.

- determine impact of natural disasters on water supply installations, from wells or springs, through pipes to plants or water distribution systems

GOTHAA allows to increase the efficiency of usual field geophysical, isotopic and datation studies, drilling, in all stages of ground water exploration management and is easily correlated to surface water managemet and tools and natural disasters impact on water resources analysis.

Conversely the integration in GIS of existing data provide new and optimized views on underground waters especially in areas poorly documented.

the approach can be developped nearly anywhere in the world, with any pre-existing state of  knowledge on regional or local hydrogeology or water use.

GSC is establised in Paris, France. The GOTHAA approach can be deployed any where in the world.

The GOTHAA approach deliverables are GIS data bases, analysis and reports.

GOTHAA provide as output imagery, maps, diagrammes, times series analysis, geomorphologic analysis, geological cross sections, 3D view and representation of water use analysis, ane many other products related to ground water management.

The integration of multiple techniques and specialities allows analysing many problems related to ground water (location, quality, quantity, extraction, protection, sustainability in intense extraction context,etc..)

Users of the approach are ground and surface water exploration and management regional and local institutions, mineral water and bottling actors, major health and food indsutry, mining, oil and gaz exploration and production industry

The GOTHAA approach has already been deployed in ten different contexts with varied purposes ranging from exploration and identification of water bodies, drilling sites choice, understanding geology and hydrogeology, measuring water extraction, climate change impact assessment, sustainable agriculture in areas of recharge, vulnerabilty to industrial and mining activities of underground water.

the flexibilty of GOTHAA approach and synergetic contribution of various specialists allows to reduce time, cost, and focus on field targets in the framework of ground water exploration, saving money by reducing the size of targets to explore.

In very well documented and explored contexts, the approach used very high ground resolution imagery and proved to provide new insight views with very high details, revealing evolutions difficult and costly to identify by usual field surveys and techniques and even to detect non anticipated evolutions.

A single ration of cost/nenefit is not significant in GOTHAA approach, due to the diversity to application and context. Let’ say first that irt allowed to produce results for environmental monitoring of watershed or ground water regions that no other technique would have allowed to obtain.

The best added value is found when using GOTHAA as soon as possible when a question or a problem arise, as it should normally reduce the field of investigation to more limited or focus point (in geographic extension as well as in  data to acquired or process)

The best indicator is the validation of the approach by major industrial actors of agro-industry and mineral water such as DANONE group.

The application has already been validated for ground water exploration, ground water management, risk analysis, sustainable human presence in areas of ground water infiltration.

The approach can be used directly for exploration, productive or monitoring purpose by industry.

GOTHAA can integrate many different types of information related to climate, rainfall, infiltration, ground water characterization, ground water extraction and proved already its capcity to do so by using operationnal tools and approaches and reducing considerably field surveys.

GOTHAA still has to be tested in other contexts and coupled with hydrologic and hydrogeologic modelling tools on local as well as regional problems of ground water management.

The GOTHAA approach always come along with a part of know-how transfer to user or client allowing not necessarily to carry out alone studies but to optimize its appeal to use GOTHAA and even better judge of the usefulness to solve his problem.

The GOTHAA method can be declined at various level of complexity and cost of studies are totally dependant of;

nature of problem

surface to cover

expected accuracy and scale

pre-existing data (geophysical, geochemical, geological, drilling data, pumping test, etc…)

available satellite imagery archives

Consequetly implementation can last from a few weeks, depending on:

availability of data

necessity and best season for field survey

availability of user and client to support our work

DANONE group has validated the generalization of the approach for water

for any inquiry about the GOTHAA approach, please refer to:

Dr Richard GUILLANDE,     

general manager

rguillande-gsc@orange.fr

tel : +33146646060

GEOSCIENCES CONSULTANTS sarl

157 rue des Blains

92220 Bagneux

France

For more information about the company, please visit www.geosciences-consult.com

contact us for more supporting material.

rguillande-gsc@orange.fr