Assessment of groundwater potential zones in Saroor Nagar watershed, Telangana, India, using geospatial techniques and analytical hierarchy process

Human survival depends on access to water. Studies of surface water are well documented, but it is challenging to know precisely where to find the groundwater resources. In order to meet water needs both now and in the future, precise understanding of groundwater resources is necessary. The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Geographical Information System (GIS) in combination with multicriteria parameters have become an effective method for assessing groundwater potential in recent years. To date, however, there have been no attempts made to define the study area’s groundwater potential. As a result, the groundwater potential of the Saroor Nagar watershed consisting an area of 42 km2 was delineated in this study using AHP, overlay analysis, GIS, and seven thematic layers (geology, slope, drainage density, rainfall, distance to waterbody, soil, and land use/land cover) for the years 2008, 2014, and 2020. The weights are assigned based on the overall setting of the region, and AHP looks for consistency ratios to optimize the weights and ranks of different thematic layers. The resulting groundwater potential zones (GWPZ) delineated using the above methods have been classified as very good, good, moderate, and poor. The research revealed that the study area has only moderate and good potential zones, with few poor zones and no very good zones. In the years 2008, 2014, and 2020, the moderate zones accounted for 76.19, 86.2, and 59.76%, of the total area, respectively, and the good zones accounted for 23.57, 12.61, and 40% of the total area. Using groundwater level data and the ROC method, the obtained result was validated, and the area under the ROC curve was 0.762, 0.850, 0.724 for 2008, 2014, and 2020, respectively, proving the viability of the suggested method for defining groundwater potential zones.