Chemosphere 303 (2022) 135265

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Chemosphere
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/chemosphere

Mapping of groundwater productivity potential with machine learning

algorithms: A case study in the provincial capital of Baluchistan, Pakistan
Umair Rasool a, b, Xinan Yin a, Zongxue Xu b, *, Muhammad Awais Rasool c,
Venkatramanan Senapathi d, Mureed Hussain e, Jamil Siddique f, Juan Carlos Trabucco g
a
State Key Laboratory of Water Environment Simulation, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, No. 19 Xinjiekouwai Street, Beijing, 100875, China
b
College of Water Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing Key Laboratory of Urban Hydrological Cycle and Sponge City Technology, Beijing, 100875, China
c
University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Burewala Sub-campus, Punjab, Pakistan
d
Department of Disaster Management, Alagappa University, Kariakudi, 630003, Tamil Nadu, India
e
Lasbela University of Agriculture, Water and Marine Sciences, Uthal, Lasbela, Pakistan
f
Earth Science Department, Quaid-I-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan
g
Universidad Metropolitana - Department of Mathematics, Caracas, Venezuela

H I G H L I G H T S G R A P H I C A L A B S T R A C T

• The provincial capital Quetta, Baluchi­

stan, Pakistan was selected for present
study.
• For GW productivity potential mapping,
geology and slope degree are very
important.
• ANN, RF and XGB models are best fitted
models in the prediction.
• The ROC and AUC provided the predic­
tion performance accuracy of the
selected models.
• Correlation coefficient, RMSE and MAE
provided the useful information for
model performance accuracy.

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Handling Editor: Derek Muir Although groundwater (GW) potential zoning can be beneficial for water management, it is currently lacking in
several places around the world, including Pakistan’s Quetta Valley. Due to ever increasing population growth
Keywords: and industrial development, GW is being used indiscriminately all over the world. Recognizing the importance of
Quetta valley GW potential for sustainable growth, this study used to 16 GW drive factors to evaluate their effectiveness by
Machine learning
using six machine learning algorithms (MLA’s) that include artificial neural networks (ANN), random forest (RF),
Groundwater productivity potential
support vector machine (SVM), K- Nearest Neighbor (KNN), Naïve Bayes (NB) and Extreme Gradient Boosting
GW factors
ROC/AUC (XGBoost). The GW yield data were collected and divided into 70% for training and 30% for validation. The
Standard error training data of GW yields were integrated into the MLA’s along with the GW driver variables and the projected
results were checked using the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve and the validation data. Out of six
ML algorithms, ROC curve showed that the XGBoost, RF and ANN models performed well with 98.3%, 96.8% and
93.5% accuracy respectively. In addition, the accuracy of the models was evaluated using the mean absolute
error (MAE), root mean square error (RMSE), F-score and correlation-coefficient. Hydro-chemical data were
evaluated, and the water quality index (WQI) was also calculated. The final GW productivity potential (GWPP)

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: zxxu@bnu.edu.cn (Z. Xu).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2022.135265
Received 1 February 2022; Received in revised form 31 May 2022; Accepted 4 June 2022
Available online 9 June 2022
0045-6535/© 2022 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
U. Rasool et al.
maps were created using the MLA’s output and WQI as they identify the different classification zones that can be
used by the government and other agenciesto locate new GW wells and provide a basis for water management in
rocky terrain.
1. Introduction
Combining satellite data and remote sensing with the GIS domain
offer adequate knowledge of surface and subsurface features needed for
groundwater (GW) potential exploration (Mogaji et al., 2011), and
provide a highly cost- and time-effective way to manage GW resources
(Adiat et al., 2012; Verma and Singh, 2013). Numerous researchers have
reported various anthropogenic and morphometric factors such as land
use/land cover, geomorphology, soil cover, slope, drainage density, and
surface temperature as critical variables that contribute to the GW po­
tential (Verbesselt et al., 2006; Avtar et al., 2010). Highly weathered and
fractured rocks (Amudu et al., 2008) offer opportunities to search for
suitable aquifers in the bedrock because weathered and fractured areas
generally describe the intensity and nature of hydrodynamic activities in
individual aquifer joints in the ground (Amadi and Olasehinde, 2010).
Studies also reported that structural hills, residual hills, and linear ridge
sites of low GW potential possess low infiltration capacity, while
bedrock and valley-fill areas offer high GW potential due to their high
infiltration and water recharge (Rajaveni et al., 2017; Berhanu and
Hatiye, 2020).
Geological structures and anthropogenic land-use practices (moun­
tains, roads, urban buildings and agricultural areas) (Gu et al., 2016;
Kaushal et al., 2017) can considerably impact GW flow and storage in
the surface and subsurface, should therefore be considered in GW
studies (Elmahdy and Mohamed, 2014). The study of the nature, origin,
and features of spring in a certain geological structure can help to pre­
dict the hard rock aquifers (Rehrl and Birk, 2010). These aquifers pro­
vide significant clean water either in fractured zones or through
carbonate rock dissolution channels (Robert et al., 2012). The hard rock
(bedrock) and unconsolidated alluvial aquifer are hydraulically con­
nected (Kazmi et al., 2005a; TCI, 2008), have relatively uniform me­
chanical behavior and are characterized mainly by fracture permeability
(Boutaleb et al., 2008). The structure and hydraulic characteristics of
superficial geology are also considered to play an important role in
influencing surface-GW interactions in drylands (Wheater et al., 2010).
Machine learning algorithms (MLA’s) have recently emerged for
precise forecast modeling that involves identifying complex structures,
especially irregular data and the development of forecast models (Olden
et al., 2008; Marjanović et al., 2011). Moreover, compared to conven­
tional statistical models, MLAs’ prediction rate is very accurate (Naghibi
et al., 2015; Chen et al., 2018), beneficial due to their capacity to include
a number of predicted variables and lost values, and their simplicity of
constructing suitable connections among predictors (Friedman and
Meulman, 2003). GW mapping via MLA’s utilizing random forest (RF)
(Sameen et al., 2019), support vector machine (SVM) (Panahi et al.,
2020), naïve bayes (NB) (Pham et al., 2021) and extreme gradient
boosting (XGBoost) have been continuously improved (Lee et al., 2018;
Arabameri et al., 2019). The goal of each is to find the most economical
and accurate model to reduce the economic cost in GW potential map­
ping. Machine learning method has attracted scientific community
attention, specifically in the last couple of years (Mojaddadi Rizeei et al.,
2019; Prasad et al., 2020) where, a study yielded 86% accuracy for GW
potential mapping using RF and XGBoost in Iran (Naghibi et al., 2020).
The water table of the Quetta Valley, has been declining at an
alarming rate (1 m/year) since 2007, possibly due to overuse of the
aquifer system (Alam and Ahmad, 2014; Kakar et al., 2019), which may
lead to complete depletion of the aquifer system if overuse is not
properly controlled. GW’s evaluation and advancement at both local and
regional levels require multidisciplinary strategies, with numerous data
resources, and by mapping all these localized geographical structures
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Chemosphere 303 (2022) 135265
(Olubusola et al., 2018). To evaluate GW productivity potential (GWPP)
in Quetta valley, we used six MLA models including ANN, RF, SVM,
KNN, NB and XGBoost and evaluated their performance with multiple
statistical approaches. Finally, we used models output with water
quality data for final GWPP maps. By including the element of highway
proximity, which is often overlooked in mapping GWPP, this study is the
first of its kind to map GW potential in the capital city of Quetta of the
least considered province, Baluchistan.
2. Material and methodology description
2.1. Materials and description
2.1.1. Study area description
The total watershed area of the provincial capital of Baluchistan,
Quetta is 1756 Km2 where 792 Km2 area is covered by alluvium (Fig. 1).
The valley is divided into two basins by Mian Ghundi and Landi’s hills,
one is Dasht plain (southern), and another is central Quetta valley
(northern).
Slip faulting and zones of convergence characterized its geology
(Alam and Ahmad, 2014). Valley comprises semi-consolidated and un­
consolidated rocks (valley fill), which are underlain by consolidated
rocks. Shale and limestone belong to Jurassic age (Chiltan and Shirinab
Formations) rocks (Kazmi et al., 2005a, 2005b) whereas siltstone, shale,
and limestone of Parh group belong to Cretaceous age rocks. Urak group
of siltstone, shale, conglomerates, and sandstone are the thick sequence
of Tertiary age rocks (Kazmi et al., 2005a). Chaman fault (North-south)
is the main fault in the area, a strike-slip fault between Indian and
Eurasian plates.
In the valley, alluvial aquifers are present in unconsolidated and
semi-consolidated rocks whereas, bedrock aquifers are present in
consolidated rocks (Khan and Mian, 2000). The alluvial aquifer consists
of sand, silt, and gravel deposits and is referred to as the primary aquifer
replenished by precipitation, runoff, and inflow from foothill regions
with bedrock aquifers. Bedrocks aquifers mainly consist of conglomer­
ates of the Urak formation and limestone of Chiltan and Shirinab for­
mations and are recharged by surrounding mountains exposed in the
area (Khan and Mian, 2000).
2.1.2. Data Collection
Geological map, Landsat 8 OLI & Sentinel 2 imageries, SRTM DEM,
precipitation data, 167 home-based wells yield information and 35 geo-
hydrological wells data monitored for at least last 10 years were ac­
quired from Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR).
The description of the dataset is presented in Table 1. In this study, 16
GWPP conditioning factors or thematic maps were used. All thematic
maps or layers were prepared in ArcGIS 10.8 and then were resampled to
create a uniform grid size of 30 × 30 m for final GWPP maps using MLAs.
2.1.3. Wells inventory data
A home-based wells inventory data or yield data were acquired from
PCRWR and insured that at least 70% of the wells are providing 3–4
gallons of water per minute during last 5 years. The 167 wells were
collected in total. The proportion of 70:30 was used to split the points
into training and validation points by using the “create random points”
tool in ArcGIS.
2.1.4. GWPP conditioning factors and mapping
We selected 16 GW conditioning factors including aspect, rainfall,
altitude, stream power index (SPI), geology, land use/landcover,
U. Rasool et al. Chemosphere 303 (2022) 135265

lineaments density, drainage density, slope in degree, curvature, topo­ Table 1

graphic roughness index (TRI), topographic wetness index (TWI), dis­ Material type and source used in the present study for GWPP mapping.
tance to fault, distance to lineaments, distance to stream and distance to Data Type Source Scale Time period
highways. The description of the conditioning factors is discussed well in
Yield data PCRWR Randomly 2015–20
the literature (Islam et al., 2021; Mirzaei et al., 2021; Yuan et al., 2021) selected
and as supplementary material (See S1). Hydro- PCRWR Randomly 2010–20
Morphometric explanatory variables such as TWI, TRI, altitude, chemical selected
drainage density, aspect, slope in degree, SPI, and curvature were data
Rainfall data Pakistan Meteorological Yearly average 2000–20
extracted from the 30 m Digital Elevation Model (DEM) downloaded Department data
from Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission (SRTM). As a result, all six Geology Geological Survey of Pakistan 1:250,000 2011
morphometric explanatory variables have a spatial resolution of 30 × DEM data SRTM, USGS Earth Explorer 1 arc second 2014
30 m grid. Distance to fault, distance to lineaments, distance to stream website
Satellite Landsat 8 OLI and Sentinel 2, 30 m and 10 December 6,
and distance to highways were created from their respective layers by
image USGS Earth Explorer website spatial 2020
using the ‘Euclidean distance’ tool under the spatial analyst toolbox in resolutions
ArcGIS. The geological map was derived from the geological toposheet
in ArcGIS. Sentinel 2 data with 10 m spatial resolution was used for land
use and lineaments extraction.
The remaining conditioning factors were resampled into 30 × 30 m

Fig. 1. Location map of the study area.

3
U. Rasool et al.
spatial resolution by using the ‘resample’ tool under the conversion
toolbox in ArcGIS. We extracted the conditioning factors values by using
the ‘extract multi values to point’ tool under the spatial analyst toolbox
in ArcGIS. The extracted points values were then imported to R software
for ML models.
3. Methodology
The importance of selected parameters of GWPP was calculated
using variable importance and build-in-feature function for each ML
model. First, we created thematic maps in ArcGIS software and extracted
the values of sample locations for all 16 factors; then, we imported them
as CSV files into R software and applied the above models. First, we
transform the data values between 0 and 1, where 1 is close to the higher
value and 0 is close to the lower value for each parameter. Then we split
the data into training and validation sets. Different MLAs were then
applied to the training set, followed by generating ROC curves with
predicted values and calculating AUC using SPSS software. Second, the
validation data were used to check the result of the training data, then
ROC curves with predicted values were generated and the AUC was
calculated (Lee et al., 2018; Prasad et al., 2020). The predicted values
were converted to 0 and 1, where we took predicted values below 0.5 as
0 and values above 0.5 as 1, where 1 represents the possibility of GWPP,
whereas 0 means the opposite. Lastly, the predicted values of the
training models were imported into the ArcGIS environment for further
analysis.
3.1. Machine learning algorithm
3.1.1. Artificial neural network (ANN)
ANNs are an effective method for learning linear and nonlinear re­
lationships between input and output pairs produced by an input layer,
intermediate hidden layers, and output layer. When constructed by
several layers, neural networks may use simplified representations
formed by previous layers to represent complex features in later layers
(Goodfellow et al., 2016). For predictive analytics, the “h2o” package
fits the model of multi-layer, feedforward neural networks (Candel et al.,
2016). ANN has the advantage that less training evidence can achieve
improved outcomes than other predictive methods (Kim et al., 2018a).
This study used the “h2o” Package to determine the GWPP areas using R
statistical software.
3.1.2. Random forest (RF)
RF is another strong and effective MLA developed by Breiman (2001)
to promote its prediction proficiencies as an extension of “classification
and regression trees” (Razavi-Termeh et al., 2019). This approach con­
sists of several decision trees and integrates them to illustrate the spatial
relationship between GW control variables, spring, and well inventory
(Kim et al., 2018b). The algorithm’s implementation is based on the
higher number of votes cast by decision trees (Micheletti et al., 2014).
The RF method does not use all accessible tree-growing information but
uses 66% of the bootstrap data, and the remaining 34% used to evaluate
the fitted data (Razavi-Termeh et al., 2019). A predictor variable is then
applied randomly during the growing process, and this variable is used
to create a node in a tree. The ‘randomForest’ package was applied
(Cutler, 2020) using R statistical software.
3.1.3. Support vector machine (SVM)
This model’s methodology is based on the principle of statistical
learning, it eliminates errors and identifies the optimal solution (Vapnik
et al., 1995). Marjanovic et al. also affirmed that separating hyperplane
has been developed into the n original space between the points in two
distinct groups (Marjanovic et al., 2009). When the point issued over the
hyper-plane is categorized as positive 1, this is categorized as negative 1.
SVM indicates output estimation by responding to a convex optimization
problem (Nansen and Elliott, 2016). A significant feature of the SVM
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Chemosphere 303 (2022) 135265
model is the fast layer recognition and analysis (Micheletti et al., 2011).
It is commonly used to solve classification and regression problems,
reducing the algorithm’s overfitting (Gayen et al., 2019). In this study,
the “svmLinear” method was applied using the ‘caret’ package in R
statistical software.
3.1.4. K-nearest neighbors (KNN)
The KNN technique is a non-parametric MLA classification, which
eliminates class density estimates (Motevalli et al., 2019). In GW,
Landslide, Gully Erosion and Flood Mapping, this technique is imple­
mented and useful (Naghibi et al., 2019; Shahabi et al., 2020). The main
hypothesis of the nearest neighbor is that unknown cells are classed in
the training set based on their similarity with known cells (He and Wang,
2007), which can be explained by the application of the Euclidean dis­
tance (Betrie et al., 2013). Fig. 2 shows an example of the classification
process in the k-nearest neighbors. The unknown cell in the figure is a
black star, and the objective is to determine if it is a well with yield or
not. Since there are two wells with yield (red squares) and one wells
without yield (green circle) in the inward circle, it will be a well with
yield if the value of K (number of nearest neighbors’) is equal to 3 (the
internal circle). However, since there are five wells without yield and
four wells with yield in the outer circle, it will be perceived as a well
without yield if the value of k is equal to 9 (the external circle). The
“caret” package was used in the R statistical software to run KNN model.
3.1.5. Naïve bayes (NB)
NB is a method of statistical classification that determines the class
for classification based on the assumption that attributes do not rely to
maximise the probability later on (Soni et al., 2011). The NB model
gathers an example of an event and then estimates the prior probability
for each class. The mean of each class is calculated to create a covariance
matrix, which is then used to create a discriminant function for each
class using Bayes’ theorem (Bhargavi and Jyothi, 2009). The NB model
has the advantage of estimating the parameters needed for classification
with a limited amount of training data (Bhargavi and Jyothi, 2009). The
“naive Bayes” package was used in the R statistical software to run NB
model.
3.1.6. Extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost)
XGBoost is an enhancing ensemble algorithm which is an enhanced
GBM. The XGBoost model uses additive learning to create a strong
learner by combining several weak learners (each tree) (Fan et al.,
2021). As a result, the gradient boosting concept is followed by both
XGBoost and GBM. But XGBoost improves the workout and prevents
overfitting. To minimize the loss function and obtain more accurate
trees, XGBoost implements second-order derivatives, while ordinary
GBM uses first-order derivatives (Dietterich, 1995; Chen and Guestrin,
2016). In XGBoost, simultaneous calculation is carried out automatically
during training to improve computer efficiency (Fan et al., 2021). It also
Fig. 2. The basic concept of K-Nearest Neighbor concept.
U. Rasool et al.
has several regularization features to avoid overfitting. The sum of the
weighted contributions of all decision trees used in XGBoost’s final
prediction (Dietterich, 1995). The “xgboost” package was used in the R
statistical software to run XGBoost model.
3.2. Models evaluation and validation
Evaluating the algorithms’ predictions with the aid of validation
samples is a prominent part of the modeling process that validates the
predictions’ accuracy (Garosi et al., 2019; Kariminejad et al., 2020). In
this study, the area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC)
Curve was selected to validate the model’s accuracy. ROC is a graphical
plot that specifies the diagnostic test models (Golkarian et al., 2018).
The value between 0 and 1 is the area under the curve (AUC), and the
higher value represents the better performance of the model (Chen et al.,
2018; Golkarian et al., 2018). The curve traces the true-positive
(Sensitivity) rate on the Y-Axis and the false-positive (1- Sensitivity or
Specificity) rate on the X-Axis (Youssef et al., 2016; Golkarian et al.,
2018).
Sensitivity =
TP
(6)
TP + FN
TN
Specificity = (7)
FP + TN
where TP is “true positives,” FN is “false negatives,” TN is “true nega­
tives,” and FP is “false positives.” TP and TN are the numbers of accu­
rately categorized pixels, whereas FP and FN are the numbers of pixels
incorrectly classified. Accuracy is calculated as
TP + NT
Accuracy = (8)
TP + NT + FP + FN
To check whether the performance of the prediction model is over­
estimated and to avoid bias, we evaluated the models not only by recall,
precision, and F-score, but also by the mean absolute error (MAE), root
mean square error (RMSE), and correlation coefficient of the delivered
prediction model metrics.
TP
Recall = (9)
TP + FN
TP
Precision = (10)
TP + FP
F-score = 2*(Precision*Recall)/(Precision + Recall) (11)
Recall score indicates the percentage of correctly predicted positive
records, while precision indicates the percentage of correct positive
predictions. The F-Score is a single measure that uses the harmonic mean
to combine Recall and Precision. The F-score ranges from 0 to 1, with 1
representing higher precision and 0 representing lower precision
(Inglada et al., 2015; Powers, 2020). The MAE, RMSE, R2 and adjusted
R2 provide information about the score and the performance of the
models, where values close to 0 represent the best model performance,
while values close to 1 represent the worst model performance (Moriasi
et al., 2007; Chicco et al., 2021). The correlation coefficient indicates
how strong or weak the relationship between two variables is and
whether this relationship is positive or negative (Ratner, 2009). The
correlation coefficient ranges from − 1.0 to 1.0.
3.3. Determination of water quality
For this study, we used mean values of all variables and especially
the selected 15 hydro-chemical variables such as HCO3, Cl, Na, NO3, Ca,
K, Ph, Mg, As, SO4, alkalinity (Al), turbidity (Tu), total dissolved solids
(TDS), hardness (H) and electrical conductivity (E.C), for WQI (see
Table 1 in S2). We used python software and calculated different
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Chemosphere 303 (2022) 135265
statistics of water quality variables and WQI by referring to WHO water
quality standards (Edition, 2011). WQI is a helpful technique to indicate
the combined behavior of water quality. We classified the final WQI
based on the Tiwari and Mishra classification (Tiwari and Mishra, 1985).
To check the concentration of WQI throughout the study area, the IDW
interpolation technique of ArcGIS software is very useful because it has
been widely used to study of the spatial distribution of parameters
(Kanagaraj and Elango, 2016).
3.4. Final GWPP maps
The final maps of GWPP were generated using the MLA output and
the WQI. The raster calculator was used to extract the final GWPP maps
for the study area. The natural break method was used to classify the
final GWPP maps into four classes: excellent, good, moderate, and poor.
The detailed methodological flow chart of the study is described in
the following Fig. 3 which categorized into three sections.
4. Results
4.1. Factors importance
In the present study, six ML models were used for prediction, with
SVM, KNN, and NB using “caret” package to analyze the importance of
features during the model development. The “caret” package analysis
the feature importance based on the wrapper method (Sánchez-Maroño
et al., 2009). The wrapper method works to evaluate the best subset of
feature for that ML algorithm. The wrapper method is also known as the
greedy algorithm because they find the best possible combinations of
features that give the best performance of the model (Sánchez-Maroño
et al., 2009). The h2o package was used for the ANN model, which
analyses the feature importance based on the Gedeon method (Gedeon,
1997). The method’s major objective is to exclude extraneous features
from the training model.(Gedeon, 1997).
Random forests are typically used in data science workflows for
feature selection. Since random forests naturally adopt tree-based stra­
tegies that help improve the node’s purity (Archer and Kimes, 2008).
This means that the impurity of all trees decreases (called gini impurity)
the most in the first stage of the trees, while it decreases the least in the
last (Archer and Kimes, 2008). So, we can construct a subset of the
essential features by cutting trees underneath a particular node. Using
the “xgboost” package, the importance is determined by a single deci­
sion tree where each attribute split point increases the output perfor­
mance and weighted by the number of node-related observations (Hastie
et al., 2009). The purity (Gini index) used to pick the split points, or
some more precise error feature may be used as a performance metric.
Then all decision trees in the model are averaged in terms of function
imports (Hastie et al., 2009). An advantage of gradient enhancement is
that it is relatively simple to obtain important results for each attribute
after the boosted trees are built.
XGBoost model obtained the highest accuracy where slope degree
was the most important factor which was also the important factor in
other ML models. Rainfall was found to be 2nd most important factor in
XGBoost model which was also important in ANN model. TWI was found
to be 3rd important factor in XGBoost which remained important in
ANN model. Land use was identified as the least significant component
in XGBoost and was similarly less significant in the RF model but was
somewhat significant in the ANN model. Fig. 4 represents the impor­
tance of each factor for all ML models.
4.2. MLA’s models output
We produced initial maps of GWPP from the results of the models,
and three MLAs, ANN, RF, and XGBoost, showed a similar pattern of
GWPP, while the other three MLAs, SVM, KNN, and NB, showed some
incorrect predictions. In all the prediction models, the capital city where
U. Rasool et al.
Fig. 3. The methodological flow chart of the present study.
Fig. 4. The relative importance of the influencing factors for MLAs.
urbanization is very dense shows a high value of 1, which means that the
possibility of the GWPP occurring in this area is very high, since 1
represents the maximum possibility of the GWPP according to the al­
gorithms, while 0 represents the minimum possibility of the GWPP.
According to the results of the models, the probability of occurrence of
the GWPP in the northeast and southwest directions is very low (Fig. 5).
4.3. Models evaluation and validation
Validation of predictive models is essential for evaluating predictive
accuracy. First, the ROC curves were created using extrapolated training
data representing 70% of the total sample size. The ROC-AUC curves
show that all six MLAs had good to excellent prediction accuracy
(Fig. 6a). However, three of the six models showed excellent accuracy,
such as an AUC value of 0.983 for XGBoost, an AUC value of 0.968 for
RF, and an AUC value of 0.935 for ANN. Similarly, SVM showed a very
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Chemosphere 303 (2022) 135265
good AUC value of 0.801. While KNN and NB showed low accuracy with
0.719 and 0.714, respectively. To validate the prediction on training
data, we used the remaining 30% data for validation. The ROC-AUC
curves observed that all six MLAs have good to excellent predictive ac­
curacy (Fig. 6b). The XGBoost, RF and ANN validated the highest ac­
curacy of training data and showed AUC value of 0.985, 0.969 and
0.971, respectively. The SVM, KNN and NB also validated the accuracy
of training data and showed the AUC value of 0.831, 0.735 and 0.719,
respectively (see Table 2 in S2).
The X-axis represents sensitivity, which is the correct positive pre­
diction value in front of all positive outputs, and the Y-axis represents
specificity, which is likewise the right negative prediction value in front
of all negative outputs.
Table 2 summarizes the different statistical information’s of the
predictive models such as recall, accuracy, F-score, MAE, RMSE and
correlation coefficient values. Precision and recall are inversely related,
U. Rasool et al.
Fig. 5. The GWPP maps created from different MLAs for the study area: (a) ANN, (b) SVM, (c) RF, (d) KNN, (e) NB and (f) XGBoost.
which implies that increasing recall decreases precision and vice versa.
We found that the F-scores of all predictive models were close to 1,
indicating that their performance is relatively strong. In particular, the
ANN, RF, and XGBoost models displayed F-scores more than 90%, while
KNN, NB, and SVM models revealed F-scores larger than 80%.
The XGBoost, RF, and ANN models were evaluated as the best-fitting
models because these models had MAE and RMSE values close to 0,
whereas the other three models, SVM, KNN, and NB, had higher values
compared with XGBoost, RF, and ANN. The correlation coefficient of
XGBoost, RF and ANN showed strong positive correlation (0.7–1.0),
while SVM, KNN and NB showed moderate positive correlation
(0.3–0.7).
4. Hydro-chemical analysis and water quality assessment
Various inorganic and organic minerals or salts dissolved in water
are referred to as total dissolved solids (TDS). TDS values in the study
area samples ranged from 146.7 to 398.7 mg/L. The water quality
samples were slightly acidic to alkaline with Ph values ranging from
6.28 to 7.98. Electrical conductivity (E.C.) is the ability of water to allow
current to flow and in the water samples the values ranged from 226 to
487 μS/cm. Hardness (H) of water indicates the amount of calcium
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Chemosphere 303 (2022) 135265
carbonates dissolved in the water, and in the water samples the H value
ranged from 55 to 88. Alkalinity was slightly elevated in the water
samples due to slightly elevated Ph values and ranged from 123 to 188
mg/L. Turbidity (Tu) depends on the solids present in suspended form,
and the water samples had values between 0.6 and 2.7 NTU.
The resulting map of the indicated WQI ranged from 26.49 to 99.86.
Well Nos. 6, 21, and 29 had higher values (91.43–99.86), evidencing
poor water quality for drinking purposes in and around the above wells
due to the presence of agricultural wastes in the surrounding area (Sahu
and Sikdar, 2008). Several secondary sources can also affect GW quality,
including irrigation, flooding, industrial pollution, fungicides, fertil­
izers, pesticides, and untreated municipal waste (Tareen et al., 2013).
Most of the wells indicated good GW conditions in the area, such as well
numbers 2, 3, 12, 21, 22, 25, 34, 42, 43, etc., and showed WQI values
ranging from 26.49 to 48.62. Nine sites were found to be unsuitable for
drinking purposes. Khan et al. revealed water quality conditions in the
Quetta valley and suggested fit for consumption of water w. r.t
physico-chemical and aesthetic water quality parameters but due to
bacterial contamination is generally poor (Khan et al., 2017). The pre­
sent study area, most of the area is in the medium WQI class. A very
small area had poor GW conditions and was mostly on agricultural land.
The distribution of WQI in the study area is shown in Fig. 7.
U. Rasool et al. Chemosphere 303 (2022) 135265

Fig. 6. Assessment of the different MLAs performance with ROC curves and AUC: (a) AUC of training data, (b) AUC of validation data.

poor class areas were mostly located in agricultural and industrial areas
Table 2
where the water infiltrates into the subsurface with dissolved solids and
MAE, RMSE and correlation coefficient of predictive models along with recall,
other toxic chemicals, ultimately affecting the water quality.
precision and F-score values for training and validation datasets.
However, the maps of potential GW productivity resulting from
ANN RF SVM KNN NB XGBoost ANN, RF, and XGBoost with WQI were ranked high because of their
Ta/Vb Ta/Vb Ta/Vb Ta/Vb Ta/Vb Ta/Vb excellent results. In Fig. 8, the results show that the areas near the capital
Recall 0.959/ 0.964/ 0.905/ 0.835/ 0.808/ 0.988/ and the city center had good to moderate GWPP in all maps. However,
0.965 1 0.888 0.852 0.823 0.941 SVM (Fig. 8b), KNN (Fig. 8d), and NB (Fig. 8e) incorrectly predicted GW
Precision 0.934/ 0.987/ 0.846/ 0.789/ 0.828/ 0.977/ yields in some areas, such as northeast to north (SVM model) and
0.933 0.971 0.865 0.763 0.778 0.970
northwest (KNN and NB models), where GW yields were less than 3 to 4
F1 Score 0.946/ 0.976/ 0.875/ 0.811/ 0.818/ 0.982/
0.949 0.985 0.876 0.805 0.8 0.955
gallons of water per minute, which was used as an area without water
MAE 0.094/ 0.017/ 0.119/ 0.153/ 0.145/ 0.025/ potential for this study.
0.04 0.02 0.14 0.18 0.18 0.02
RMSE 0.306/ 0.130/ 0.345/ 0.392/ 0.381/ 0.160/ 5. Discussion
0.2 0.141 0.374 0.424 0.424 0.141
Correlation 0.804/ 0.956/ 0.686/ 0.6/ 0.617/ 0.935/
Coefficient 0.914 0.914 0.673 0.57 0.588 0.955 Many studies reported the significance and predictive capability of
R2 0.363/ 0.381/ 0.648/ 0.916/ 0.471/ 0.875/ spring-related variables utilized in GW spring potential assessments,
0.326 0.346 0.837 911 454 0.913 determined by the field’s geographical, morphological, hydrological,
Adjusted R2 0.353/ 0.376/ 0.645/ 0.915/ 0.466/ 0.874/
and climatic conditions (Naghibi and Pourghasemi, 2015; Chen et al.,
0.312 0.332 8.33 0.909 0.442 0.912
2019a). In Ozdemir’s et al., interpretation, topographic characteristics,
a
Training. such as elevation and slope, have a negative effect on GW spring ca­
b
Validation. pacity, and TWI and drainage density, on the other hand, have a positive
impact (Ozdemir, 2011). Similar studies report that topographical
4.5. Final GWPP maps characteristics along with soil cover characteristics, tectonic character­
istics (fault depth and distance to faults), and hydrological characteris­
GWPP maps are primarily used to manage aquifer systems by tics (drainage density) influence the rate of rainfall-runoff and the rate of
determining which area is more productive. However, to successfully infiltration, thus potentially influencing the potential occurrence of GW
manage an aquifer, information on GW quality is also required due to spring (Ozdemir, 2011; Naghibi and Pourghasemi, 2015). Chen et al.
the suitability of this water for various applications such as drinking, reported a more significant effect on lithology, altitude, and distance to
agriculture, and industrial. Salinity (Prinos et al., 2014), streams, while the least influence appears to be on land use, NDVI, plan,
non-point-source pollutants like nitrate from agriculture (Puckett et al., and profile curvature (Chen et al., 2018).
2011), and geogenic pollutants like arsenic may affect water quality in
highly productive aquifers (Schaefer et al., 2017).
5.1. Model influencing factors co-vary with different feature selection
When final GWPP map was compared to the model’s output,
different patterns for the distribution of potential classes emerged,
The comparative significance of the 16 GW influencing factors was
indicating that GW quality should be considered when analyzing GW
demonstrated using the “variable importance” function and/or build-in-
potential (Al-Abadi et al., 2021). The excellent GWPP class was mainly
feature function of the model’s such as ANN, SVM, RF, KNN, NB and
located in mountainous areas, while the areas with good to moderate
XGBoost. The results revealed that in different MLAs, the importance of
GWPP class were mainly located in urban areas with dense population
influencing factors was different due to different methods of feature
and artificial vegetation cover. In urban areas, agricultural and livestock
selection or feature importance criteria. In the ANN model, aspect was
wastes mixed with GW, which reduced the GW quality in the area. The
influenced 100% during the model development, but in XGBoost and RF

8
U. Rasool et al.
Fig. 7. The IDW interpolation using GIS of WQI results at 35 different locations.
models, it decreased to 29.77% and 15.73%, respectively. While in the
RF model, altitude influenced 87.05% during the model development
but, in the ANN, and XGBoost models, it decreased to 85.12% and
16.29%, respectively. Similarly, in the XGBoost model, slope degree
influenced by 80.92% during the model development, which increased
in the ANN model to 91.85% and decreased in the RF model to 47.16%.
Based on the changed behavior of influencing factors, we calculated
the overall significance of different variables to understand the overall
importance of different influencing factors (Fig. 9). In the present study,
geology, slope, drainage density, distance to highway, distance to river,
distance to lines, height and density of lines were more important
compared to other factors. These factors indicated the study area’s
geomorphology, where more than 50% of the area is a mountainous
region. Geomorphology is the most important element, since the
geomorphic features of each research area’s diverse landforms either
enhance or limit the potential for GW (Prasad et al., 2020). Similarly,
curvature, SPI, aspect and TRI were found to be least important factors.
5.2. Model performance
Several findings have shown that, compared with other models, RF
models have better precision. According to Naghibi et al. who used RF,
RF-optimized genetic algorithm (RFGA) and SVM methods to assess GW
potential by spring locations, RF and RFGA models (Naghibi and
Dashtpagerdi, 2017). The XGBoost model has been used to estimate GW
level (Ibrahem Ahmed Osman et al., 2021), analyses GW salinity
(Sahour et al., 2020), and assess GW quality (Bedi et al., 2020) in recent
studies. Naghibi et al. used RF, parallel random forest, and XGBoost
models to determine the GW spring potential (Naghibi et al., 2020). The
AUROC values for all models were about 86%, with the XGBoost model
having the highest value. Pourghasemi et al. applied three machine
learning models and RF exhibited 0.987 accuracy (Pourghasemi et al.,
2020). Wei et al. applied NB, SVM and RF models in his study and
predicted 75.22%, 94.55% and 95.22% accurate results, respectively
(Chen et al., 2019b).
In the present study, based on the ROC curve performance on
9
Chemosphere 303 (2022) 135265
training data, the ANN, RF and XGBoost models showed the maximum
accurate results 93.5%, 96.8% and 98.3%, respectively, while the SVM,
KNN and NB models were showed slightly less accuracy of 80.1%, 71.9%
and 71.4%, respectively. During the validation of training accuracy, the
ANN, RF and XGBoost models were validated the accuracy of trained
models and showed the accuracy of 97.1%, 96.9% and 98.5%, respec­
tively, while the SVM, KNN and NB models were also validated the
slightly less accuracy of 83.1%, 73.5% and 71.9%, respectively. Ac­
cording to the F-score values, the prediction models exhibited high ac­
curacy; in particular, ANN, RF, and XGBoost revealed more than 90% F-
score values. MLA’s are data-derived methods, which primarily rely on
the quantity and the quality of available data. The models only make
decisions based on data, resulting in adjusted threshold lines for
different ML models. Each MLA’s has some pros and cons which should
be understand during the model building.
Based on the previous studies, natural break (Jenks) was utilized to
classify the GWPP maps (Razavi-Termeh et al., 2019; Al-Djazouli et al.,
2020). We calculated the area based on the natural break to analyze the
area in Km2 for all four GWPP classes and discussed only the good GWPP
class as most of the urbanized area covered by this class. Statistics
showed that the ANN, RF and XGBoost models predicted 646.91 km2,
683.76 km2 and 655.67 km2 area respectively in the good GWPP class
respectively, while the SVM, KNN and NB models predicted 542.01 km2,
443.42 km2 and 541.17 km2 area in the good GWPP, respectively, and
the prediction for this class was slightly wrong.
6. Conclusions
GWPP maps were prepared based on various geological, anthropo­
genic, morphometric and hydrological influencing factors such as pre­
cipitation, distance to highways, distance to rivers, distance to
lineaments, distance to faults, SPI, elevation, land use/land cover, ge­
ology, lineament density, drainage density, slope, TRI, TWI, curvature
and aspect with six MLAs such as ANN, SVM, RF, KNN, NB and XGBoost
for beautiful Quetta Valley, Baluchistan, Pakistan. 167 wells with yield
and without yield data were used for selected models. 70% of the data
U. Rasool et al.
Fig. 8. Classified GWPP maps based on Natural break (Jenks), the maps were classified into 5 classes, Very Poor, Poor, Moderate, Good and Very Good: (a) ANN, (b)
SVM, (c) RF, (d) KNN, (e) NB and (f) XGBoost.
was used to train the models and the remaining 30% was used to vali­
date the results. The performance of the MLAs with the training data was
satisfactory based on the ROC curves and AUC accuracy and showed that
the performance of XGBoost, ANN and RF models were excellent with
the accuracy of 98.3%, 96.8% and 93.5% respectively. Hydro-chemical
data were also analyzed and WQI was calculated and giving satisfactory
results. We classified the WQI of the study area into four major classes
and found that most of the samples were demonstrated good to mod­
erate water quality. The final maps of GWPP were prepared using MLA’s
output and WQI and indicated that mountainous regions have high
GWPP. The final GWPP maps could be utilized to manage and install
new GW pumping stations to avoid the extra boring cost and most
importantly depletion of GW level for unnecessary usage. In addition,
the current study found that places near the city center and urbanized
areas exhibited moderate to good GWPP zone, while places with dense
vegetation and industrial sites exhibited poor GWPP zone.
10
Chemosphere 303 (2022) 135265
7. Recommendations
- With alarmingdeclining rate of water (1 m/year) since 2007, use of
MLAs to investigate GWPPis time and cost efective in GW studies.
- These results can be used with high confidence and in future studies
in other areas of Pakistan to analyze the spatial distribution of GWPP
areas and constructive management by GW-related agencies.
- Deep learning and hybrid models are best tools at areas where
sample points are not enough to investigate GW potential mapping.
Author contributions statement
Umair Rasool: Conceptualization, Data collection, Writing - original
draft, Investigation, Data curation; Xinan Yin: Conceptualization,
Writing- Original draft; Zongxue Xu: Reviewing Manuscript, Supervi­
sion; Muhammad Awais Rasool: Writng origional draft, Methodology,
U. Rasool et al.
Fig. 9. We used six MLAs for this study. These MLAs worked with different selected conditioning factors and assessed the study’s selected conditioning
factors’ overall importance.
Reviewing Manuscript; Venkatramanan Senapathi: Reviewing Manu­
script, Data Curation; Mureed Hussain: Data Collection, Data Curation;
Jamil Siddique: Investigation, Data Curation; Juan Carlos Trabocco:
Reviewing Manuscript, Helping ML models building..
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
The authors are thankful to the Pakistan Center of Research in Water
Resources (PCRWR) for providing GW yield data and hydro-chemical
data, the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) for providing
precipitation data, Survey of Pakistan for providing us different types of
vector data for the present study, and the United States Geological
Survey (USGS) for providing the free Sentinel-2 images and (SRTM)
Global Digital Elevation Model via https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/. The
authors are also thankful to National Key R&D Program of China
(2017YFC1502701) for providing the fundings for this research.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2022.135265.
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