Prediction of groundwater flowing well zone at An-Najif Province, central Iraq using evidential belief functions model and GIS

The objective of this study is to delineate groundwater flowing well zone potential in An-Najif Province of Iraq in a data-driven evidential belief function model developed in a geographical information system (GIS) environment. An inventory map of 68 groundwater flowing wells was prepared through field survey. Seventy percent or 43 wells were used for training the evidential belief functions model and the reset 30 % or 19 wells were used for validation of the model. Seven groundwater conditioning factors mostly derived from RS were used, namely elevation, slope angle, curvature, topographic wetness index, stream power index, lithological units, and distance to the Euphrates River in this study. The relationship between training flowing well locations and the conditioning factors were investigated using evidential belief functions technique in a GIS environment. The integrated belief values were classified into five categories using natural break classification scheme to predict spatial zoning of groundwater flowing well, namely very low (0.17–0.34), low (0.34–0.46), moderate (0.46–0.58), high (0.58–0.80), and very high (0.80–0.99). The results show that very low and low zones cover 72 % (19,282 km²) of the study area mostly clustered in the central part, the moderate zone concentrated in the west part covers 13 % (3481 km²), and the high and very high zones extended over the northern part cover 15 % (3977 km²) of the study area. The vast spatial extension of very low and low zones indicates that groundwater flowing wells potential in the study area is low. The performance of the evidential belief functions spatial model was validated using the receiver operating characteristic curve. A success rate of 0.95 and a prediction rate of 0.94 were estimated from the area under relative operating characteristics curves, which indicate that the developed model has excellent capability to predict groundwater flowing well zones. The produced map of groundwater flowing well zones could be used to identify new wells and manage groundwater storage in a sustainable manner.