A Study on Developing Groundwater Information System (GWIS) for Sustainable Management of Groundwater Resources-A Case Study from Visakhapatnam Urban Region

Groundwater resources are of most essential natural treasure for mankind. In urban areas the population is dependent upon the groundwater for drinking, industrial, and other purposes. The demand for groundwater has been increasing in urban areas because of the fact that the population of urban areas has been increasing day by day. The Visakhapatnam city of Andhra Pradesh is one such city, which is considered as fastest developing urban areas of East coast of India. The city has unique geology and hydrological conditions with the three important aquifer systems. The groundwater resources need to be scientifically monitored for sustainable utilisation. For this purpose, a computer based program called Groundwater information system (GWIS) has been designed for this city and being proposed in this paper. The information will be able to integrate all aspects related to groundwater occurrence, recharge, monitoring of utilisation, quality assurance, database maintenance, etc. For this purpose, software packages like GIS, will be customised and implemented. The details of the information system has been presented in this paper. It is related to the Visakhapatnam urban area as the case study and the details are discussed.