Groundwater Withdrawals Prediction in Semi-arid Basins Using Machine
Learning Algorithms and Integrated Water Management Models
Abstract
The use of modeling tools for integrated water resources management is a
complex task due to the large number of processes involved in a basin.
Moreover, these modeling tools commonly require information that is not
readily available, such as illegal water withdrawals, or other data
difficult to obtain, which results in groundwater models that fail to
capture the aquifer dynamics. In recent years, machine learning
algorithms have shown outstanding performance as prediction tools.
Despite being questioned for not having a physical basis, they have been
used in areas such as hydrology and hydrogeology (e.g., for flow
prediction, rain forecast). Thus, the objective of this research is to
estimate groundwater withdrawals using machine learning algorithms and
integrated water management models. To achieve this objective, ensembles
of groundwater levels were generated with a previously calibrated
groundwater/surface water integrated model. Then, these ensembles were
used as input parameters for Gaussian process regression (GPR) and
artificial neural network (ANN) models to construct time series of water
withdrawals throughout a basin. This method was applied in the Petorca
and La Ligua basins, in central Chile, as they exhibit a contrasting
reality in terms of water availability even when they have geographical
proximity. Also, these basins are within an effective extraction
monitoring program lead by the Chilean water authority that can be used
to validate the users’ water withdrawal. Our results show that the GPR
model, compared to ANNs, adequately estimates the spatiotemporal
distribution of groundwater withdrawals in the pilot basins. Thus, the
use of machine learning algorithms improves the performance of
integrated water resources management models.