Metaheuristic based groundwater Vulnerability assessment framework Under climate and land use change

Abstract

Groundwater is an indispensable resource that is used for various activities like domestic, irrigation, and industrial activities. In developing nations, demand for freshwater resources is increasing rapidly due to climate change, population growth, agricultural demand and industrialization which in turn increases the water stress. In addition to increasing demand and climate change, groundwater gets contaminated through anthropogenic activities such as industrial wastewater discharge, fertilizers used in agriculture, poor sewerage system, dumping sites. Once groundwater resource gets contaminated it takes huge cost and time to replenish them. Hence proper management and protection strategy needs to be deployed. newlineVulnerability assessment and mapping is a significant tool for the sustainable management of groundwater resources. DRASTIC is an extensively used index model to map groundwater vulnerable zones. Groundwater vulnerability assessment using original DRASTIC model may under or overestimate vulnerability of the region because of predefined weights and rates which are location specific and based on expert opinion (generally referred to as subjectivity). To overcome this inherent subjectivity, optimized rates and weights of original DRASTIC model are required to assess the groundwater vulnerable zones precisely. Recent advancements in soft computing techniques have improved the performance of DRASTIC model prediction accuracy and employment of metaheuristic algorithm (MH) to address the subjectivity of DRASTIC model has gained research interest. MH algorithm coupled with bivariate and Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) approach helps to improve the robustness of vulnerability model by optimizing original DRASTIC rates and weights. newline