Identify potential groundwater locations using hierarchical analysis method

Abstract

Groundwater is an important resource that contributes to the total annual supply, and in any case, the excessive investment has led to a significant depletion of the available groundwater. Therefore, the assessment of potential groundwater sites is very important to protect water quality and manage groundwater systems in the study area south of Homs Governorate.This can have done by introducing Each of the tectonic factors (faults and lineaments), drainage, slope, rainfall, geological structures, and calculating the importance (weight) of each in the model of potential groundwater sites using the hierarchical analysis method (AHP). This method determines the final weight of each factor affecting the presence of Ground water, based on the opinions of local experts, using pairwise comparison matrices and calculating the percentage of congruence between these opinions. Then a weighted linear combination of the used, classified and representative maps of the mentioned factors was carried out using the Geographical Information System (GIS) program thus, obtain a scheme for the distribution of potential groundwater sites where the area was divided in terms of its suitability into three sectors (high, medium, and low) that were tested in accordance with the wells in the study area. It was found that the distribution of these sectors is closely related to the locations of groundwater wells. The results of this research could be useful in shortening the field of conventional hydrogeological investigations that are relatively expensive and good for water resource planning, forecasting and monitoring.