Dam Site Suitability Mapping and Analysis Using an Integrated GIS and Machine Learning Approach

Abstract

: Meeting water demands is a critical pillar for sustaining normal human living standards, industry evolution and agricultural growth. The main obstacles for developing countries in arid regions include unplanned urbanisation and limited water resources. Locating and constructing dams is a strategic priority of countries to preserve and store water. Recent advances in remote sensing, geographic information system (GIS), and machine learning (ML) techniques provide valuable tools for producing a dam site suitability map (DSSM). In this research, a hybrid GIS decision-making technique supported by an ML algorithm was developed to identify the most appropriate location to construct a new dam for Sharjah, one of the major cities in the United Arab Emirates. Nine thematic layers have been considered to prepare the DSSM, including precipitation, drainage stream density, geomorphology, geology, curve number, total dissolved solid elevation, slope and major fracture. The weights of the thematic layers were determined through the analytical hierarchy process supported by several ML techniques, where the best attempted ML technique was the random forest method, with an accuracy of 76%. Precipitation and drainage stream density were the most influential factors affecting the DSSM. The developed DSSM was validated using existing dams across the study area, where the DSSM provides an accuracy of 83% for dams located in the high and moderate zones. Three major sites were identified as suitable locations for constructing new dams in Sharjah. The approach adopted in this study can be applied for any other location globally to identify potential dam construction sites.

Modeling Groundwater Potential Zone in a Semi-Arid Region of Aseer Using Fuzzy-AHP and Geoinformation Techniques

“…Surface water bodies, such as lakes and dams, directly increased the groundwater recharge through infiltrating surface water. Lineament density is one of the most important factors of groundwater recharge for any region [51,65]; this can be seen in this analysis, as well.…”

“…Bhattacharjee [75] estimated the annual groundwater storage based on fluctuations in water levels and specific yield approach. However, in the current study, the groundwater level data, the amount of groundwater data, and the groundwater quality data were limited due to the economic constraint and regional situation of the study area [51,53,56,60,61,65]. Therefore, in this study, an estimation of the values in regions without incorporating the recharge and groundwater head data (i.e., pumping well tests) was carried out using an MCDM model based on hydrogeological factors.…”

“…Visual interpretation methods [79] using Landsat-8 satellite data (band 4, 7, and 1) and geological maps were used to extract the lineaments map. Studies have shown that groundwater intensity increases with higher lineament density [51,59]. The low weight was assigned for low lineament density and high weight for high lineament density (Figure 4).…”

“…Al-Ruzouq et al [51] Patra et al [52] Arulbalaji et al [53] Al-Shabeeb et al [54] Adeyeye et al [55] Pinto et al [56] Jasrotia et al [57] Bathis and Ahmed [58] Yeh et al [59] Senanayake et al [3] Al-Abadi [27] Zaidi et al [60] Mallick et al [16] Mahmoud et al [61] Bagyaraj et al [62] Agarwal et al [63] Nag and Ghosh [64] Mukherjee et al [65] Magesh et al [66] Abdalla et al [26] Machiwal et al [30] Preeja et al [67] Chenini et al [ AHP method for MCDM has been widely used in recent decades and has been successfully applied in groundwater potential zone mapping [38][39][40][41]. However, despite the popularity of AHP, the method is sometimes criticized for being unable to adequately deal with the inherent uncertainties and imprecision associated with mapping the perception of a decision-maker to crisp numbers [42].…”

Location Suitability for Small Reservoirs at the Bodri-Kuto River Basin Based on Spatial Monthly SPI

“…17/2019, the development of water resources has been intense, including efforts to conserve and develop water resources, as well as implementing programs for mitigating water-related disasters, the other three reservoirs (= 9.09%) have a capacity of more than 1 million m 3 , which are using river flow as the water sources. The locations of these three reservoirs depend on criteria such as the river flow, rainfall, topographical capacity, geology of the site, etc., as explained in [1,2].…”