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Original scientific article

OPTIMIZED GIS-BASED RISK MAPPING OF WATER WALLS IN KIRKUK CITY

By
Amel Nashat Shakir Orcid logo ,
Amel Nashat Shakir
Contact Amel Nashat Shakir

Lecturer, Researcher, Department of Mathematics, Northern Technical University , Kirkuk , Iraq

Omar Falah Mirdan Orcid logo ,
Omar Falah Mirdan

Assistant Lecturer, Researcher, Department Technical of Surveying, Northern Technical University, Kirkuk,2Assistant Lecturer, Researcher, Department Technical of Surveying, Northern Technical University , Kirkuk , Iraq

Arjan Sharfuldeen Omar Orcid logo
Arjan Sharfuldeen Omar

Assistant Lecturer, Researcher, Surveying Engineering, Northern Technical University , Kirkuk , Iraq

Abstract

In Kirkuk City, Iraq, groundwater pollution is increasingly a problem due to intense urbanization, population growth, and unregulated water well drilling. Although the systematic assessment of groundwater pollution is essential to domestic and agricultural applications, the systematic analysis of its contamination has not been conducted, and the currently available approaches are not able to determine the high-risk zones. This paper involves Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Multi-Objective Particle Swarm Optimization (MOPSO) to develop optimization risk maps of groundwater contamination. Data on key water quality parameters pH (7.10–8.30), turbidity (5.30–190.50 NTU), electrical conductivity (EC) (681.40–4245.87 μS/cm), total dissolved solids (TDS) (476.78–2563.5 mg/l), calcium (Ca) (31.33–256.33 mg/l), and chloride (Cl) (10.3–192.4 mg/l) were collected from 43 wells in the city. Kriging and Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) were used as spatial interpolation methods, and then MOPSO was used to optimize the weights of the parameters to produce a more accurate risk mapping. The findings revealed that the central and southern areas were more contaminated, with TDS reaching up to 1477 mg/L and chloride up to 192.4 mg/L. On the other hand, contamination was lower in the northern and eastern parts, with TDS values of approximately 264 mg/l. The incorporation of MOPSO improved the reliability of groundwater risk predictions, providing a superior decision-making aid. This paper outlines how MOPSO and GIS can be used to manage groundwater effectively, which shows more precise risk evaluation. To improve predictions of long-term groundwater contamination, future studies should incorporate real-time monitoring and account for seasonal changes.

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Citation

This is an open access article distributed under the  Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (CC BY-NC) License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 

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