Sustainability starts where life starts – at the source

Annual rainfall in Finland is similar to southern Europe, but evaporation here is much lower, so we don’t really ‘dry out’. However, there are places in the west and the south-west of the country which occasionally suffer from a water shortage. This is due to the fact that large parts of the country consist of a Precambrian bedrock, usually granite. When the Scandinavian Ice Sheet melted approximately 10,000 years ago, the glaciers receded and left behind narrow streamlined hills known as eskers or oses that were formed by sediment deposition from the glacier's melt water streams. These layers of sand and gravel can be more than 100 metres thick and can contain significant groundwater reserves. In some places around the world, aquifers can be several hundred metres deep and can span across several countries. But shallow aquifers like our eskers are small and are vulnerable to external influences. Changing parameters caused by, for example, climate change can therefore impact on our living conditions – especially in some areas of Finland that suffer from a lack of high-quality groundwater aquifers in the vicinity of the cities. We continue to learn from ongoing research, for example based on a combination of the analysis of core sample sediments and geophysical methods such as ground-penetrating radar and high-resolution seismic reflection. After all, we want to be able to use our groundwater in the long term, and not suddenly be left ‘high and dry’.

The region around Turku in the south-west of Finland, for instance, has a population of close to 400,000 and the city itself is a centre of commerce, a seaport and a university city.

Insufficient water reserves during dry periods and seasonal quality problems have resulted in this region’s water supply having to be switched from locally sourced surface water to aquifers which are artificially filled with river water – a technique called managed aquifer recharge (MAR). This is a project of Turku Region Water (Aki Artimo), supported and aided by GTK among other institutes and companies. Turku Region Water used a three-dimensional geological model in the planning and implementation of this project which was initiated in 2001 and was subsequently developed into a groundwater flow model. The model is now used to simulate the highly complex processes and interdependencies to make scientifically sound water resource planning decisions possible for the first time.

We then apply the knowledge garnered from such domestic projects to other projects all around the world. We were also able to apply the managed aquifer recharge (MAR) expertise described here to a project in Vietnam. The experience we have in risk assessment and risk management procedure for naturally occurring arsenic in groundwater from our RAMAS project in the Tampere region is currently helping us with an upcoming project in Nepal, where well contamination is a major health risk for the people living in the Terai region. Very practical technological developments can help research along too – together with the University of Oulu and the Finnish Environmental Institute, we are trialling drone-based water sampling in the DROMINÄ project. This could make it possible for a greater number of samples to be taken more quickly and, most importantly, more safely, in particular from large bodies of water such as lakes or from less accessible places, even autonomously and automatically in the future.

For many of these tasks, we operate within a very large network with many different partners – universities and research institutions in Finland, Europe and around the world. In DMT, we have found a partner who makes collaboration very quick and easy and who has a great deal to offer in terms of both practical and academic engineering: the staff are innovative, passionate and always keen to find a new and even better solution to a challenge, while always bearing its feasibility in the relevant markets in mind. There is the NEXT project, for example, which focuses on developing new geomodels and exploration technologies. Or the GATEWAY project, which is connecting economic development in the area of raw materials with existing education and research projects in Latin America and Africa. We are also currently developing CLOSUREMATIC, a bespoke system for the digital planning of mine closure. This is about incorporating the operational planning and implementation measures for mine closures (such as surface rehabilitation measures) into a digital management system. The processes, some of which can be extremely lengthy, can generate vast volumes of different data and can be subject to numerous approval procedures, need to be documented in a transparent and comprehensible way. This not only makes modifications easier, such as to schedules, but also secures decades’ worth of expertise, as the employees who have handled a mine for many years have often already gone into retirement before the closure plan has been effected in full.

Many of DMT’s employees live in the Ruhr region, a former mining region with numerous prime examples of mine closure projects. And DMT made a technical contribution in the area of water management in the implementation of many, if not all, of these examples. What’s more, DMT plays a key part in securing future supplies of drinking water for millions of people living in the Ruhr region by generating groundwater and mine water models. Sustainability in the area of water management is therefore more than merely an abstract term for DMT and GTK – we are familiar with and experience sustainability on a daily basis.

We are consequently involved in development projects in many countries around the world, such as the inventory and action plan for closed and abandoned mines in Zambia and sound environmental and health risk assessment for mining operations in Armenia. It is frequently also a question of developing political recommendations on the basis of science and of discussing them with the relevant authorities and interest groups. With all of these projects, everyone involved – and our customers in particular – benefit from a wealth of combined expertise which would not otherwise be available. This generates trust in the reliability of the results and in the validity of our recommendations. They say that sharing is caring – and this applies to knowledge and experience too.