Umvoto

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Core Services
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Our Core Services

Core services at Umvoto include: Water resource evaluation studies, water resource development and management, monitoring design and implementation, contamination risk assessment, pollution & contamination remediation planning, georisk provention applications to flood & seismic hazards, disaster management, groundwater modelling, fractured rock aquifer characterisation, remote sensing and GIS applications, borehole siting and education and training in all service areas.
Our Approach is our Strength
Appreciating what goes on beneath our feet is one the core strengths of Umvoto. The team has an unrivalled geological understanding of subsurface sedimentary (depositional environments onshore and offshore, bedding, facies, erosional processes and patterns) and structural features (jointing, faulting, folding) and geodynamic forces. This knowledge and insight is brought to bear on all projects, e.g. groundwater-related resource development and management issues in so far as it defines aquifer geometry and physical characteristics.

During the course of more than a decade of hydrogeological research in the natural field laboratory of the Western Cape, Umvoto has developed new Geo-informatics technologies for systematic, regional hydrogeological, geological and hydrological investigations in complex fractured-rock terrains, based around the integration and geospatial analysis of large sets of different data.
Out of this systematic approach, and the extensive databases that it has assembled over the years, Umvoto's hydrogeological team has developed insights into successful, cost-effective borehole-siting and groundwater resource development at all scales, ranging from the individual urban or rural landowner to the large metropolis. It also applies this expertise, especially as related to predictive modelling tools, to the growing problem of groundwater pollution, site contamination and its remediation.

More recently, the experience gained and the core scientific skills used in our work are being made available in courses presented in-house and at tertiary institutions. These courses are presented by experienced lecturers at both graduate and undergraduate level and for other disciplines as a continuing learning programme for the layman, the technician and the professional.
Umvoto's experienced scientists have access to an associate network of local and international specialists baed in South Africa,Europe and  the United States.The company also has in-house expertise in geospatial analysis and modelling using a powerful combination of Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems with internationally recognised software for realistic, accurate modelling of surface and groundwater flows in complex geological environments.

In addition to a fresh approach to the sedimentary or "primary" aquifers, Umvoto's special expertise lies in the hydrogeological investigation of shallow "fractured-and-weathered" or "regolith aquifer" environments and of deep groundwater flow in geomechanically strong "fractured-rock" systems. Its home base of operations in the Western Cape Province of South Africa provides direct experience in one of the world's largest fractured-rock aquifers, namely, the Table Mountain Group (TMG), in which supermature, orthoquartzite units in excess of 1 km thickness underlie an area greater than 100000 km 2 in mountain ranges of the Cape Fold Belt.