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

Abstract The present study was carried out to identify of the groundwater potential zones (GWPZ) in northern part Anantapur district 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 (DD), geology, land use/land cover (LULC), soils, slope, rainfall for assessment GWPZs, which is generated RS GIS technique. Furthermore, relative weights were allocated AHP approach rank assigned each sub-criterion based on expert advice. combination eight layers ArcGIS resulted a map, providing about very good 2.45% (87.06 km 2 ), 12.76 (452.56 moderate 63.47% (2250.75 poor 15.99% (567.16 5.32% (188.73 ) possible zones. acquired outcomes validated with area under curve (AUC/ROC) method. results show that there strong positive correlation between GWPZs 78% validation high performance decreases low yield areas. This concludes model will be more reliable GWP. Any management project these favourable regions would benefit stack holders.