Spatial Data Management and Numerical Modelling: Demonstrating the Application of the QGIS-Integrated FREEWAT Platform at 13 Case Studies for Tackling Groundwater Resource Management

Abstract

Because of the spatial nature of groundwater-related data and their time component, effective groundwater management requires the application of methods pertaining to the Information and Communication Technologies sector, such as spatial data management and distributed numerical modelling. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate the effectiveness of the QGIS-integrated FREEWAT platform and an approach combining spatial data management and numerical models to target groundwater management issues. FREEWAT is a free and open source platform integrated in a Geographic Information System environment and embedding tools for pre-and post-processing of Water 2020, 12, 41 2 of 31 spatial data and integrating numerical codes for the simulation of the hydrological cycle, with a main focus on groundwater. To this aim, this paper briefly presents the FREEWAT platform, introduces the FREEWAT approach, and showcases 13 case studies in European and non-European countries where the FREEWAT platform was applied. Application of the FREEWAT platform to real-world case studies is presented for targeting management of coastal aquifers, ground-and surface-water interaction, climate change impacts, management of transboundary aquifers, rural water management and protection of groundwater-dependent ecosystems. In this sense, compared to other existing software suites, FREEWAT allows data analysis and visualization to accomplish each step of the modelling workflow, i.e., from data analytics, to conceptual model definition, to numerical modelling and reporting of results. The presented experiences demonstrate that improved access to data and the portability of models and models' results can help to promote water sustainability from the localto the basin-scale. Furthermore, FREEWAT may represent a valuable tool to target the objective of increasing the capabilities of public authorities and private companies to manage groundwater resources by means of up-to-date, robust, well-documented and reliable software, without entailing the need of costly licensing, nowadays seldom affordable by public water authorities. Based on the strengths highlighted, the FREEWAT platform is a powerful tool for groundwater resources management, and for data collection, sharing, implementation and comparison of scenarios, for supporting planning and decision-making.

Evaluating the Impacts of Pumping on Aquifer Depletion in Arid Regions Using MODFLOW, ANFIS and ANN

“…Challenges exist in understanding system dynamics and the flow patterns, analyzing the groundwater responses to stresses in the system, and assessing the sustainable groundwater yield. In short, groundwater modeling is an area of continued research, as identified by several publications [4][5][6][7][8][9]. The groundwater flow is governed by the well-known Boussinesq equation.…”

A Spatially Distributed, Physically-Based Modeling Approach for Estimating Agricultural Nitrate Leaching to Groundwater

“…Dedicated tools for pre-processing of field data [53,54] and for post-processing of models' results are integrated as well. FREEWAT was applied to date to a variety of case studies [55]. The present work may be considered as a continuation of the research activities performed to better describe agricultural water use in hydrological modelling.…”

GIS-SWIAS: Tool to Summarize Seawater Intrusion Status and Vulnerability at Aquifer Scale

“…A new ArcGIS tool for groundwater flow simulation and visualization of results was also implemented by [19]. Other authors (De Filippis et al [31]) applied a previously developed GIS-based tool (AkvaGIS), in addition to a groundwater flow model, to study the impacts of pumping on seawater intrusion in coastal aquifers in Malta and Italy. is tool was used in other studies (Perdikaki et al [32]) to analyze hydrochemical parameters in a coastal aquifer that presented seawater intrusion problems.…”