DEPICTION OF FINITE GROUNDWATER POTENTIAL ZONES BY ANALYSING THROUGH AHP AND ARCGIS FOR THE REGION OF VISAKHAPATNAM DISTRICT, ANDHRA PRADESH

The demand for groundwater assessment in India increased significantly due to indiscriminate usage of limited water sources. Groundwater depletion is caused by increase of population and unequal distribution, inadequate irrigation methods, fast urbanization/industrialization, large-scale deforestation, draughts, inefficient land use practises. Hence, the requirement ofwater for agriculture, households, and industry grows. The study reveals the potential zones in the developing metropolitan city of Visakhapatnam by utilization the technique of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) by remote sensing data in ArcGIS. By considering remote sensing data, thematic layers were prepared (drainage density, soil, land use land cover, rainfall, slope and geology). The process is utilized to find the normalized weight from pairwise matrix to identify the weights of various thematic layers. The weights and ranks extracted from AHP method has been provided in the analysis tool of weighted index overlay in ArcGIS to showcase the groundwater potential zones thereby generating a map indicating various zones.The present research area is categorized into four prospective zones, namely good, moderate, low and very low and the zones which classified as good is the best region for the groundwater availability and recharge. Information that acquires from indication map will be useful for identifying the condition of groundwater, locations for water extraction and suitable methods are to be implemented for groundwater recharge.