AHP based analysis of groundwater potential in the western escarpment of the Ethiopian rift valley

Abstract

This study investigated groundwater potential in the Western escarpment of the Ethiopian Rift valley, taking Dijo catchment as a case study, an area that is known for its critical shortage of water. Different thematic layers were used to determine the groundwater potential of the catchment. PCI Geomatica and Rockwork were used to automatically extract lineament and lineament orientation, respectively. Weights of parameters were computed using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). Rank was assigned to each feature class for each thematic map according to their characteristics and interrelationship with groundwater. Once the mapping was done, validation of the estimated result was done. Accordingly, the result indicates that there is a matching between the analysis results and samples taken from boreholes with an accuracy result of 79.2%. The results revealed that nearly half of the catchment was found to have high-to-very-high groundwater potential while the remaining exhibiting limited potential for groundwater. Despite the high potential, there is a critical shortage of water. This is partly attributed to poor planning and limited capacity in identifying water resource potential. Thus, we suggest that efforts should be made to exploit the available water resources thereby to solve the societal problem.

Review: Groundwater research in the Ethiopian Rift Valley Lakes region

“…There are studies done to assess and evaluate the water resources in the CRV and the Rift Valley. Among these studies are: Comparative assessment of the water balance and hydrology of selected Ethiopian and Kenyan Rift Lakes (Ayenew and Becht, 2008) (Thomas et al, 2019); Analytical Hierarchal Process (AHP) based analysis of groundwater potential in the western escarpment of the Ethiopian rift valley (Abrar et al, 2021); Groundwater Resources in the Main Ethiopian Rift Valley: An Overview for a Sustainable Development (Bonetto et al, 2021); and Quantifying the Regional Water Balance of the Ethiopian Rift Valley Lake Basin Using an Uncertainty Estimation Framework (Abraham et al, 2021). However, there are significant differences in the figures they are providing, and in the approaches, they are following.…”

GIS and AHP Based Groundwater Potential Zones Delineation in Chennai River Basin (CRB), India

“…The accuracy of the potential map depends on how precisely the weights are assigned to each layer [19]. Researchers used several methods in assigning accurate weights to the thematic layers and the AHP method is widely used [13,15,22,65,66]. In this study, groundwater potential zones were identified using AHP-aided methodology.…”

“…The rapid growth of space technology has played a vital role in groundwater studies. Remote sensing (Rs) and the geographic information system (GIS) are promising tools for the efficient planning and management of groundwater resources [19][20][21][22]. NRSA, in India, is one of the pioneers in using the integrated study of RS and GIS for delineating groundwater recharge potential in an area [23].…”

Application of remote sensing and GIS technique to identify resource potential zone for sustainable watershed: a case study of Takoli Gad watershed, Tehri Garhwal, Uttarakhand, India

“…Multi-criteria decision analysis via analytical hierarchy process is the most popular and well known GIS based approach used for land and water management (Saaty, 1980;Arulbalaji et al, 2019;Abijith et al, 2020;Rajesh et al, 2021, Abrar et al, 2021, Doke et al, 2021. AHP helps in integrating all thematic layers (Saranya and Saravanan, 2020).…”

“…Water flows downward from higher to lower elevations. Lower elevated area were assigned a higher weight while highly elevated areas were assigned a lower weight (Abrar et al, 2021). Studies from the previous year have shown that water potential zones increase with lower topographic elevations (Awawdeh et al, 2014).…”