The effects of climate change and rapid population growth increase the demand for freshwater, particularly in arid and hyper-arid environments, considering that groundwater is an essential water resource in these regions. The main focus of this research was to generate a groundwater potential map in the Center Eastern Desert, Egypt, using a random forest classification machine learning model. Based on satellite data, geological maps and field survey, fifteen effective features influencing groundwater potentiality were created. These effective features include elevation, slope angle, slope aspect, terrain ruggedness index, curvature, lithology, lineament density, distance from major fractures, topographic wetness index, stream power index, drainage density, rainfall, as well as distance from rivers and channels, soil type and land use/land cover. Collinearity analysis was used for feature selection. A 100 dependent points (57 water points and 43 non-potential mountainous areas) were labeled and classified according to hydrogeological conditions in the three main aquifers (Basement, Nubian and Quaternary Aquifers) in the study area. The random forest algorithm was trained using (70%) of the dependent points. Then, it was validated using (30%) and the hyper-parameters were optimized. Groundwater potential map was predicted and classified as good (5.1%), moderate (0.1%), poor (4.2%) and non-potentiality (90.6%). Sensitivity (92%), F1-score (94%) and accuracy (97%) are validation methods used due to the imbalanced dataset problem. The most important effective features for groundwater potential map were determined based on the random forest and the receiver operating characteristics curve. Groundwater management sustainability was discussed based on the predicted groundwater potential map and aquifer conditions. Therefore, the random forest model is helpful for delineating groundwater potential zones and can be used in similar locations all over the world.

The increasing demand for freshwater supplies and the effects of climate change in arid and hyper-arid regions are pushing governments to explore new water resources for food security assurance. Groundwater is one of the most valuable water resources in these regions, which are facing water scarcity due to climatic conditions and limited rainfall. In this manuscript, we provide an integrated approach of remote sensing, geographic information systems, and analytical hierarchical process (AHP) to identify the groundwater potential zone in the central Eastern Desert, Egypt. A knowledge-driven GIS-technique-based method for distinguishing groundwater potential zones used multi-criteria decision analysis and AHP. Ten factors influencing groundwater were considered in this study, including elevation, slope steepness, rainfall, drainage density, lineament density, the distance from major fractures, land use/land cover, lithology, soil type, and the distance from the channel network. Three classes of groundwater prospective zones were identified, namely good potential (3.5%), moderate potential (7.8%), and poor potential (88.6%) zones. Well data from the study area were used to cross-validate the results with 82.5% accuracy. During the last 8 years, the static water level of the Quaternary alluvium aquifer greatly decreased (14 m) due to excessive over pumping in the El-Dir area, with no recorded recharges reaching this site. Since 1997, there has been a noticeable decline in major rainfall storms as a result of climate change. The current study introduces a cost-effective multidisciplinary approach to exploring groundwater resources, especially in arid environments. Moreover, a significant modern recharge for shallow groundwater aquifers is taking place, even in hyper-arid conditions.