Groundwater Flow Analysis at Arid Areas With Limited Data by Using Geo-Statistics and Genetic Algorithm

Abstract

Groundwater management at many arid areas in the world has been difficult to be properly performed due to the limited availability of hydrogeological data. Recent development of Kharga Oasis, as an arid area located at western desert of Egypt, has been mainly depended on groundwater of Nubian Sandstone Aquifer. During the last two decades, the excess pumping of groundwater at Kharga Oasis brought about a significant drawdown of groundwater table. To implement an optimal groundwater management, temporal and spatial variation of groundwater table should be investigated first as an indispensable factor in groundwater flow analysis. In the current study, temporal change of groundwater pore pressure for arbitrary target points is analyzed using Geo-statistics and Genetic Algorithm models. It was found that Genetic Algorithm technique produces good performance compared with Geo-statistics model and can be available to analyze the temporal change of groundwater table with limited data.