Geospatial and an AHP approach for delineating potential groundwater zone for Sakkottai block, Tamil Nadu

In the present analysis, the multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) approach was used to target the groundwater prospect zone using geospatial and geostatistical techniques in Sakkottai block. Various thematic layers like drainage, geomorphology, land use/land cover, slope, and lithology have been prepared. Based on the thematic layer characteristics, to assess the groundwater potential, the weightage was extracted from the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) for each class of thematic layers and allocated to the individual thematic layers; finally, in the GIS environment, all the themes were combined and categorized into various groups of groundwater prospective zones. Thus, 5 categories of groundwater zones like very good, good, moderate, poor, and very poor were identified. The groundwater delineated zone map was verified with well water level data collected from groundwater department.