A Comparative Assessment Between Three Machine Learning Models and Their Performance Comparison by Bivariate and Multivariate Statistical Methods in Groundwater Potential Mapping

As demand for fresh groundwater in the worldwide is increasing, delineation of groundwater spring potential zones become an increasingly important tool for implementing a successful groundwater determination, protection, and management programs. Therefore, the objective of current study is to evaluate the capability of three machine learning models such as boosted regression tree (BRT), classification and regression tree (CART), and random forest (RF), and comparison of their performance by bivariate (evidential belief function (EBF)), and multivariate (general linear model (GLM)) statistical methods in the groundwater potential mapping. This study was carried out in the Beheshtabad Watershed, Chaharmahal-e-Bakhtiari Province, Iran. In total, 1425 spring locations were detected in the study area. Seventy percent of the spring locations were used for model training, and 30 % for validation purposes. Fourteen conditioning-factors were considered in this investigation, including slope angle, slope aspect, altitude, plan curvature, profile curvature, slope length (LS), stream power index (SPI), topographic wetness index (TWI), distance from rivers, distance from faults, river density, fault density, lithology, and land use. Using the above conditioning factors and different algorithms, groundwater potential maps were generated, and the results were plotted in ArcGIS 9.3. According to the results of success rate curves (SRC), values of area under the curve (AUC) for the five models vary from 0.692 to 0.975. In contrast, the AUC for prediction rate curves (PRC) ranges from 77.26 to 86.39 %. The CART, BRT, and RF machine learning techniques showed very good performance in groundwater potential mapping with the AUC values of 86.39, 86.12, and 86.05 %, respectively. By the way, The GLM and EBF models in comparison by machine learning models showed weaker performance in spring groundwater potential mapping by the AUC values of 77.26, and 67.72 %, respectively. The proposed methods provided rapid, accurate, and cost effective results. Furthermore, the analysis may be transferable to other watersheds with similar topographic and hydro-geological characteristics.