Integration of Delphi Technique and Analytical Hierarchy Process Method in Assessment the Groundwater Potential Influence Criteria: A Case Study of the Ba River Basin

Abstract

Water is a boon for all living beings over the world and groundwater is considered one of theindispensable natural sources of potable water. It is necessary to assess and predict the groundwaterpotential to provide insights for decision-makers for proper planning and management of groundwater.The occurrence of groundwater depends on hydrological, ecological, climate, geological, andphysiographical criteria. The purpose of the present study is to choose and attribute scores to all variousfactors that affected groundwater prospects in the Ba river basin. Firstly, the Delphi method was appliedin the expert-based survey to choose six parameters that are considered as influencing factors, namely,lineament density, rainfall, slope, land cover, drainage density, and geology. Then, the weights for thevarious factors were generated using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) approach which allows thepairwise comparison of criteria influencing the potential areas. The consistency analyses show that thefindings were consistent with a previous study. The consistency and sensitivity analyses showed that theobtained results were coherent, providing the weight vector of the achievable criteria that affect thegroundwater prospect in the study area. The study reveals that lineament density and slope are criteriaaffecting the most prominent groundwater occurrence with 35.1% and 20.1%, respectively. However, theinfluence of other factors (rainfall, land cover, drainage density, and geology) is not visible. These criteriaare assigned to the small weights and do not have a significant influence on the groundwater potential.The study results provide baseline