Groundwater quality assessment and its correlation with gastroenteritis using GIS: a case study of Rawal Town, Rawalpindi, Pakistan

Majority of the people of Pakistan get drinking water from groundwater source. Nearly 40 % of the total ailments reported in Pakistan are the result of dirty drinking water. Every summer, thousands of patients suffer from acute gastroenteritis in the Rawal Town. Therefore, a study was designed to generate a water quality index map of the Rawal Town and identify the relationship between bacteriological water quality and socio-economic indicators with gastroenteritis in the study area. Water quality and gastroenteritis patient data were collected by surveying the 262 tubewells and the major hospitals in the Rawal Town. The collected spatial data was analyzed by using ArcGIS spatial analyst (Moran’s I spatial autocorrelation) and geostatistical analysis tools (inverse distance weighted, radial basis function, kriging, and cokriging). The water quality index (WQI) for the study area was computed using pH, turbidity, total dissolved solids, calcium, hardness, alkalinity, and chloride values of the 262 tubewells. The results of Moran’s I spatial autocorrelation showed that the groundwater physicochemical parameters were clustered. Among IDW, radial basis function, and kriging and cokriging interpolation techniques, cokriging showed the lowest root mean square error. Cokriging was used to make the spatial distribution maps of water quality parameters. The WQI results showed that more than half of the tubewells in the Rawal Town were providing “poor” to “unfit” drinking water. The Pearson’s coefficient of correlation for gastroenteritis with fecal coliform was found significant (P < 0.05) in Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA) zone 2, and with shortage of toilets, it was significant (P < 0.05) in WASA zones 1 and 3. However, it was significantly (P < 0.01) inversely related with literacy rate in WASA zones 1, 2, and 3.