A need for hydrogeological info

"We supply a lot of drilling equipment to the developing world to a range of customers - international NGO, local NGO and, local contractors. We get enquiries each week for one place or another and people often move to a early decision to buy a drill rig before essentially working out the profile of borehole required. ( I stumbled onto your site actually looking for some geological overview for Latvia!!)

• Darfur - in Sudan - an interesting example - International NGO's were used to the largely sedimentary formation in South Sudan (the earlier area in crisis) and it took persuading to annouce that Darfur was largely crystalline not sedimentary or Nubian Sandstone
• Indonesia Post Tsunami - Aceh. (I am technical drilling adviser to UNICEF for 4 months consultancy this year) An example of rigs being mobilised without a decent hydro geological review to spot very high to overflowing artesian aquifers and lots of salinity. A huge amount of money has been spent on drilling holes where people should have known better.
• India - example 3 million hand pump hole + many millions more machine pump wells and India in crisis from over abstraction. Early monitoring and evaluation might have given more of a head start in seeing this problem coming up.
  So what do I want to see? Good knowledge base to help identify what drilling method needs applying where, selfishly I guess so our customers see what they are getting into - but for them they don't waste money on over tooling for contingencies that might not exist
  I guess when I clicked on a territorial map I would like to see a simple hydrogeological map to illustrate the divisions on your database - sedimentary water - water in fissures with maybe a minimum maximum depth and comment on permeability/yield? The information is out there I don't know how it gets onto a single database
  For your interest I attach a paper REDUCING BOREHOLE COSTS IN RURAL AFRICA I wrote for World Bank - it sets out my belief that groundwater abstraction needs better execution - and knowledge is a key component.
  What could I do for IGRAC? I guess I would like to voice the needs for those who have to put the holes down in the ground on the information they are provided with I have no problem on doing this for the 'greater good of all' and not just as a consultant and purveyor of drilling technology to my own ends."