Integrated multi-criteria analysis for groundwater potential mapping in Precambrian hard rock terranes (North Gujarat), India

Abstract

In north Gujarat, local communities depend on Precambrian basement aquifers for their primary source of water supply.Increasing demand for potable water puts stress to explore groundwater from less reliable sources of basement rocks.The objective is to map groundwater potential zone (GWPZ) in water-scarce Precambrian terranes using integrated multi-criteria analysis (AHP and Geospatial techniques).Various important thematic has been prepared and the output of the GWPZ map was grouped into six different categories.The results show that very-high and high groundwater potentials extend over an area of 4.29% and 12.86% respectively of the total area.The Kappa index method was used for validation and its result showed an effective and reliable result between collected water level data with calculated GWPZ.It shows 83.3% accuracy for very-high, 85.7% accuracy for 2 high, and 90.1% accuracy for moderate GWPZ.The synthesis of the work can be applied anywhere having similar setups for groundwater prospect and management.