GIS-based multi-criteria decision making and entropy approaches for groundwater potential zones delineation

In arid and semi-arid, due to the lack of surface water, groundwater plays key role in people survival. Therefore, assessing groundwater potential zones is vital to conserve and manage this resource properly. The main object of this study was to compare two methods of AHP and entropy for delineating groundwater potential zone in arid region of Iran. For this regard, withdraw in groundwater level in 16 piezometer wells along with eight GWP conditioning factors of slope degree, stream power index (SPI), landuse, geology; rainfall volume, elevation, soil and lineament density have been considered in the training process while the discharge in the other 16 wells was involved in verifying process of the two models. GWP maps were provided by overlaying all the thematic maps in terms of the obtained weights from AHP and entropy methods. Finally, the models performance was compared through statistical measures of Sensivity, Specificity and True Skill Statistics (TSS). The results show that IOE model (TSS = 0.16) have higher prediction performance than AHP approach (TSS = 0). Therefore, IOE was more promising tools for GWP modeling.