Determination of groundwater potential zone using geospatial and geophysical method for UPNM campus, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Abstract

Access to clean water is critical for various socio-economic purposes, particularly at Universiti Pertahanan Nasional Malaysia (UPNM). Groundwater has been elected as an alternative clean water resource to address the water scarcity issue at student residential colleges. The objective of this study is to develop a groundwater potential map for the UPNM campus by using the integration of geospatial and geophysical methods. This study adopted a weighted linear combination (WLC) model in ArcGIS software to integrate five major groundwater parameters: lithology, land use/land cover (LULC), slope, elevation, and lineament. The resulting groundwater potential zone map was classified into four zones, with 25.41%, 42.9%, 25.94%, and 5.73% of the study area falling under very low-potential, low-potential, high-potential zone, and very-high-potential zone, respectively. Electric resistivity tomography (ERT) traverses of 400 m and 800 m were conducted at two locations to validate the resulting groundwater potential map. Pole-dipole and dipole-dipole arrangements yielded resistivity and induced polarisation (IP) values with the 2D resistivity images, showing that the most probable groundwater potential zone was less than 50 m depth. The geospatial and geophysical results agreed well in prospecting the most probable area of groundwater. The application of integrated remote sensing, GIS, and geophysical survey in this study confirmed the groundwater potential zones in the UPNM campus, which are located in the northeast and southeast parts of the Bukit Gemilang stretch. The resulting groundwater potential map provides valuable information for future planning of water supply for the UPNM campus.