Groundwater Potential Zone (GWPZ) for Urban Development Site Suitability Analysis in Bhopal, India

This study uses remote sensing, GIS and MCDA techniques for studying the availability of groundwater resources and their suitability for urban residential planning in Bhopal, the capital city of Madhya Pradesh, India. The first part of our research involves integration of nine different thematic layers in AHP to identify GWPZ. The study reveals that 13.51% of the area has very high, 13.77% of the area has high, 12.05% has medium-to-high, 27.61% of area has medium groundwater potential, while the remaining 33.05% has low groundwater potential. In the second part of the research, the resultant GWPZ is combined with eight different thematic layers for identifying suitable urban residential development sites. Urban residential site suitability map shows that only 16.97% of the area has very high suitability, 20.71% area has high suitability, 25.81% of the area has moderate suitability and 23.56% has low suitability, while the remaining 12.94% area is non-suitable.