Assessment of a data-driven evidential belief function model and GIS for groundwater potential mapping in the Koohrang Watershed, Iran

The objective of this study is to produce groundwater potential map (GPM) and its performance assessment using a data-driven evidential belief function (EBF) model. This study was carried out in the Koohrang Watershed, Chaharmahal-e-Bakhtiari Province, Iran. It's conducted in three main stages such as data preparation, groundwater potential mapping using EBF and validation of constructed model using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. At first, 864 groundwater data were collected from spring locations; out of that, 605 (70%) locations were selected for training/model building and the remaining 259 (30%) cases were used for the model validation. In the next step, 12 effective factors such as altitude, slope aspect, slope degree, slopelength (LS), topographic wetness index (TWI), plan curvature, land use, lithology, distance from rivers, drainage density, distance from faults and fault density were extracted from the spatial database. Subsequently, GPM was prepared using EBF model in ArcGIS environment. Finally, the ROC curve and area under the curves (AUC) were drawn for verification purposes. The validation of results showed that the AUC for EBF model is 81.72%. In general, this result can be helpful for planners and engineers in water resource management and land-use planning.