User:FK049043/Alain Gachet

Alain Claude Christian Gachet was born in the French colony of Madagascar in 1951. He is a French physicist specialized in geology. He is the inventor of an algorithm that can detect the presence of deep groundwater from radar images taken by satellite for which he registered a patent and trademark known as WATEX He is a business entrepreneur, owner and CEO of RTI Exploration.

Early years and education
The son of a forestry officer, Alain Gachet grew up in an isolated region of northern Madagascar. He has said that his youth instilled in him a love and respect for nature.

When he reached the age of 14, seven years after the independence of Madagascar, he moved to the capital Tananarive, where his father was transferred. After a discovery and reading of the Bible, he developed a passion for biblical history and its related archeology which led him to seek, in 1966, a summer residency in Israel, at the kibbutz of Evron, in Galilee. During his stay, he had the opportunity to do an internship in geology and hydrogeology with experts from the University of Tel Aviv, in the Sinai desert.

In 1969 his family settled in mainland France. After attending French post-secondary Preparatory Classes, he was accepted into the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines de Nancy from which he graduated in 1975.

Career as Petroleum Engineer at Elf Aquitaine
Alain Gachet began a career in 19785 with Elf Aquitaine and was assigned to the North Sea oil exploration team. He made his mark by inventing a method to identify new gas fields. For this, he was awarded the Elf Innovation Award.

He was sent to Gabon, then to the Middle East and to Kazakhstan, Russia [ref. necessary], before leaving for Congo Brazzaville. In 1996, in a"disagreement on the policy of the company" at the time of the Congo-Brazzaville Civil War, he resigned.

Entrepreneur in the field of exploration.
Alain Gachet subsequently received specialized training in radar exploration and acquisition techniques in the United States. In 1999, he founded a mining exploration company, Radar Technologies International Exploration, aka RTI Exploration, focused on exploration and discovery of gold and ore deposits. .

Because of a non-competition clause, he was restricted from working in the oil industry during four years following his resignation. Soon after, he embarked on the exploration of gold subsoil in the republic of Congo, then in Mali [ref. desired]. He prospected for gold-bearing zones by panning the river bottoms for months with the Pygmies of Central Africa in the equatorial forest, and thereby acquired a solid knowledge of the sub soils of the Congo before the use of any radar interpretations. .

Alain Gachet was later commissioned by Shell, as a consultant, to prospect for an oil project in Sirte, Libya. .

Genesis of using satellite radar to prospect for water
In June 2002, after studying satellite radar images taken from the Libyan desert, Gachet identified very clear parasitic radar echoes in the south of Sirte, which proved to be the signs of a leak which measured billions of cubic meters, originating from the Great man-made River, a huge artificial underground pipeline of four meters in diameter built by Colonel Gaddafi. Bearer of the bad news, the engineer was held for some time in Libya. .

He then began research for a mathematical algorithm that would allow isolation of radar signals that solely represented soil moisture signals. After two years of work, he developed a solution that could remove the artifacts on the Earth's surface [ref. desired], such as buildings, but also natural irregularities, such as rocks. .

Testing and development
In 2004, RTI was urgently commissioned by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugées for the implementation of its method of radar detection and for the drilling of some 350 wells in eastern Chad and northern Sudan on the sites of camps sheltering 250,000 refugees from the Darfur war. Alain Gachet and the drilling team traveled across the deserted region, comparing the satellite images and visual cues present in the field. .

The success of the operation attracted the attention of Bill Woods, White House cartographer at the time, who called upon Alain Gachet in June 2005. The system of the French scientist was highly appraised by Dr. Saud Amer, head of the United States Geological Survey, USGS, who described his colleague as "genius". .

United States Agency for International Development USAID entrusted RTI with a second mission in the Darfur region of Sudan. On the specific indications of Alain Gachet, 1,700 wells were drilled.

Additional projects and assignments
Alain Gachet continues development of the WATEX method to improve upon the exploration of water at depths of more than 80 meters below the earths surface. Deep ground aquifers are discovered through his new technology in Afghanistan, Angola, Ethiopia, Sudan, Togo, and the sultanate of Oman.

During this period, RTI participated in the archaeological research of the Hebrew Mission in Jerusalem, on the supposed tomb of King Herod the Great which was discovered in 2007.

In 2013, Gachet and his team located an underground lake measuring 200 000 000 m3 in the desert county of Turkana in Kenya: the Lotikipi Basin aquifer is one of the largest aquifers known to date on the African continent. The Lotikipi Basin Aquifer contains 200 billion cubic meters of fresh water and covers an area of 4,164 km2. The aquifer is nine times the size of any other aquifer in Kenya and has the potential to supply the population with enough fresh water to last 70 years or indefinitely if properly managed.[1][2] Some wells remain open, but one planned for 160,000 nomads in the region was dismantled because the Kenyan government could no longer fund it.[8]

In 2015, the Iraqi government appealed to Alain Gachet to find new water reserves in an attempt to relieve Iraq from the threat of water shortages, generated upstream, in the dams along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. With the support of the European Union and UNESCO, Gachet delineated a map showing more than 67 aquifers, including 64 located in northern Iraq, on a territory of more than 1.68 million hectares. .

Awards and honors
In January 2015, upon the recommendation of Ségolène Royal, the French Minister of Ecology at that time, Alain Gachet is awarded by Yves Coppens, the rank of Chevaliers of the French Legion of Honor. IIn the US, he was elected in the “Space Technology Hall of Fame” by NASA and the Space Foundation in 2016 for using modern space technologies for the progress of humanity.

In 2017, endorsed by the organizations that had previously accompanied him but also by George Washington University, the University of Turin and the Canadian Space Agency, Gachet calls for an increase in the drilling of aquifers and the establishment of regulation on rapid agricultural development and relates his message through television, lectures and in writing in addition to publishing an memoir of his experiences: Le sourcier qui fait jaillir l’eau du désert.

Only aquifers that are renewable can reasonably be exploited because fossil water must be preserved for future generations, according to Alain Gachet. However, they represent together, by far, the largest freshwater deposit on the planet. There is more fresh water hidden underground than visible on the lakes, rivers and glaciers. Up to thirty times more according to NASA estimations.

Nonetheless, more than one billion people do not have access to drinking water and every day, thirty thousand people die due to unsafe drinking water and all the while, access to water is just under their feet. ref. necessary]. Alain Gachet believes that there is "enough water in Africa to transfigure the entire face of the continent - enough water to stop many wars, rebuild agriculture and restore dignity and hope to millions of men".

He directly links the European migration crisis of the 21st century to the desertification of the Sahel and the agricultural underdevelopment it entails; according to him, conflicts in the Middle East are also linked. .

The Watex Method
The method developed by Alain Gachet, a portmanteau of the words "water Exploration". The Watex method merges several types of measurements; geological, geophysical, climatic, and spatial remote sensing. Combining these data, Gachet drew a grid of probabilities to guide the physical exploration, both on the surface and in the depth of the subsoil.

The results are expressed on color maps through the patented procedure called Watex. In cases where radar images do not allow for ground penetration beyond a depth of twenty meters, the Watex system permits inferences of a sufficient number of parameters to reveal certain geological aspects up to four hundred meters under the surface and more, if the program is supplemented by seismic echographies in addition to data from oil wells.

The Sudan Darfur campaign conducted between 2005 and 2008 on 1,700 wells showed a Watex success rate of 98% 7.

Obstacles
The cost of deep drilling is thirty times greater than that of a conventional well, constituting up to  $ 200,000 to equipe a well at 300 meters (compared to just $ 6,000 for a conventional well). According to Alain Gachet, while his method presents a viable technical solution exists, its successful implementation can be thwarted by corruption, by the apathy of local political powers, by indecision and by the lack of cooperation of humanitarian agencies.

Expositions

 * H. Staub & A. Gachet, Terra, Galerie Omnius, Arles,from April 2 to May 30 2016.


 * Watex picture illustrating "The wonderful side of nature and the horrible side of man. "


 * H. Staub & A. Gachet, Terra II, Galerie Omnius, Arles, Terra II, Exposition du 4 juillet au 15 septembre 2016.