From Night Water Runs to Data-Driven Wells

Safe water access remains fragile for hundreds of millions of people. Climate variability, population growth, and costly treatment systems make the problem even harder in many regions. When drilling a new well fails, money is lost—and trust is too.

WATER4ALL focuses on one lever with outsized impact: getting the location right. By combining field data with geophysics, satellite layers and machine learning, we can improve the odds before any rig arrives.

Traditional siting methods work, but failure rates can still be high in fractured rock terrains. The idea behind our open-source stack (watex) is simple: learn from thousands of historical attempts, fuse that knowledge with current field measurements, and map the most promising zones—ranked by feasibility and community need.

• Open algorithms and transparent assumptions
• Community and NGO data as first-class inputs
• Outputs designed for practical decisions on the ground

In parts of Côte d’Ivoire, during the dry season, families were walking into the forest at night to find water in lowlands and rocky outcrops—risking encounters with wildlife and accidents. The question became urgent: could we use data to stop these dangerous journeys?

That question sparked a multi-year effort to turn scattered geophysical surveys and field logs into an approach that predicts success before drilling starts.

In Tankessé (eastern Côte d’Ivoire), data from a local partner were processed with the watex workflow to choose a station that could meet a community target flow rate. Drilling achieved 9.7 m³/hr against a 7.3 m³/hr model estimate—an intentional conservative bias to reduce financial risk while increasing the chance of success.

Conservative estimates help planners avoid over-promising while still steering rigs to the highest-potential points.

WATER4ALL is growing from case studies to a shared platform. The aim: reduce failed drilling, cut costs, and prioritize communities most at risk during the dry season. Success means fewer emergency water runs and more reliable taps—year round.

The next step is scale: more community inputs, better regional models, and simpler tools so local teams can make confident siting decisions anywhere.

Data alone can’t solve water scarcity—but it can make every attempt smarter. Your local observations about wells, dry-season behavior, geology and access constraints sharpen the map and protect limited budgets.

Add your voice and help turn risky guesswork into targeted action.