Identification of groundwater recharge-based potential rainwater harvesting sites for sustainable development of a semiarid region of southern India using geospatial, AHP, and SCS-CN approach

Groundwater recharge-based rainwater harvesting (RWH) is a standout among the most capable structures to reduce water deficit issues and to build the accessibility of water for sustainable development in the semiarid regions because of absence of precipitation and flighty precipitation patterns. The delineation of potential recharge zone (PRZ) with RWH and selection of sites cause a greater dispute for the water stakeholders because of deficient framework. The essential thematic layer such as land use/land cover, soil, geology, vadose zone, drainage density, slope, and runoff were used for delineation of PRZ and RWH sites. Analytical hierarchical process (AHP) was carried out by assigning different weights to different thematic layers to determining the PRZ and RWH sites. The present study endeavours to decide the suitable areas for RWH using Soil Conservation Service curve number (SCS-CN) based on surface runoff with geospatial techniques. The enlargement of water asset is proposed by the development of RWH structures such as farm pond (FP), percolation tank (PT), check dam (CD), and gully plug (GP) having 73.53% (358.08 km(2)) appropriate for FP, 8.62% (42 km(2)) reasonable for PT, 17.48% (85.16 km(2)) reasonable for CD, and 0.35% (1.71 km(2)) for GP of the present study region. Based on integrated mission of sustainable development specification, 20 PT, 11 FP, and 4 CD were identified having 85%, 90%, and 100% accuracy in agreement between existing structures and predicted potential site. The present study approach demonstrates the higher accuracy for identification of RWH at any scale with sustainable water resources development.