Identification of groundwater potential zones in southern India using geospatial and decision-making approaches

The present study was carried out to identify of the groundwater potential zones (GWPZ) in the northern part of the Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh State, India using Remote Sensing (RS), Geographical information system (GIS), and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) approaches. In this study, various thematic maps categorized viz. geomorphology (GM), lineament density (LD), drainage density (DD), geology, land use/land cover (LULC), soils, slope, and rainfall for assessment of GWPZs, which is generated using RS and GIS technique. Furthermore, the relative weights were allocated to various thematic maps using the AHP approach and the relative rank assigned to each sub-criterion based on expert advice. The combination of the eight thematic layers in ArcGIS resulted in a groundwater potential map, providing the information about very good 2.45% (87.06 km2), good 12.76 (452.56 km2), moderate 63.47% (2250.75 km2), poor 15.99% (567.16 km2), and very poor 5.32% (188.73 km2) groundwater possible zones. The acquired outcomes were validated with the area under the curve (AUC/ROC) method. The results show that there is a strong positive correlation between the GWPZs with 78% validation high performance and decreases to the low yield potential with poor areas. This study concludes that the AHP model will be a more reliable for the assessment of the GWP. Any groundwater management project carried out in these favourable regions would benefit the stack holders.