Groundwater Modelling in Urban Development to Achieve Sustainability of Groundwater Resources: A Case Study of Semarang City, Indonesia

Since 1900, Semarang City has been meeting its industrial water needs by pumping groundwater through its underlying aquifers. The trend toward exploiting groundwater resources has driven the number of deep wells and their production capacity to increase, and therefore leads to the water table to drop from time to time, which has been marked as one of the primary causes of land subsidence there. The main aim of the current study was to numerically model the temporal and spatial evolution of groundwater table under excess abstraction so that a groundwater management strategy can be accordingly drawn up for ensuing the sustainability of groundwater resources in the future. A series of numerical simulations were carried out to take into account hydrogeological data, artificial and natural discharges of deep wells, and boundary effects in Semarang City. The groundwater modeling is calibrated under two flow conditions of the steady state from 1970 to 1990 and the transient state from 1990 to 2005 for six observation wells distributed in Semarang City. Four scenarios that reflect potential management strategies were developed, and then their effectiveness was systematically investigated. The results of our study indicate that the implementation of proper groundwater control management and measure is able to restore the groundwater level to rise back in Semarang City, and in turn achieve the sustainability of groundwater resources.

Automated summary

Since 1900, Semarang City has been meeting its industrial water needs by pumping groundwater, leading to land subsidence due to excessive groundwater exploitation. A numerical study was conducted to model the temporal and spatial evolution of groundwater table under excess abstraction, aiming to develop a groundwater management strategy for sustainability. The results show that proper groundwater control measures can restore the groundwater level in Semarang City and ensure the sustainability of groundwater resources.