Kathmandu, Nepal

November 20-21, 2014

International Symposium
Geohazards: Science, Engineering and Management
Paper No. OT-07

Hierarchical Fuzzy Rule based Model for Groundwater

Vulnerability and Assessment of Nitrate Pollution Hazard in
Kathmandu Basin
1

Dhundi Raj Pathak , Netra Prakash Bhandary , Ryuichi Yatabe

1
Engineering Study & Research Centre, Kathmandu, Nepal
2
Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Ehime University, Matsuyama, Ehime, Japan

Corresponding Author, Email: esturesearch@gmail.com; draj28@yahoo.com

Key words
Groundwater
vulnerability, Nitrate
hazard, Fuzzy model,
DRASTIC
parameters,
Kathmandu

1.

Abstract
This paper presents fuzzy inference system (FIS) as an alternative to the
conventional overlay index method for the evaluation of groundwater
vulnerability to nitrate pollution in watershed scale within GIS environment. A
hierarchical FIS model has been developed benefiting from expert knowledgebased DRASTIC system to produce groundwater vulnerability maps showing
the likelihood of groundwater pollution due to different hydrogeological factors.
A case study relating to groundwater vulnerability assessment in shallow aquifer
of Kathmandu basin, Nepal has been accomplished. Spatial distribution map of
nitrate has been developed to show the level of nitrate hazard in the study basin.
Nearly 10% of the study area exceeded WHO guidelines of 10 mg/L nitrate-N
value and nearly 60% of shallow aquifer has impacted level of nitrate-N, i.e.
between 2 and 10 mg/L. These results also indicated that the northern part of the
Valley and highly permeable alluvial deposits are dominated by very high
vulnerability level is also under the threat of high nitrate-N pollution hazard. A
significant correlation between vulnerability index and nitrate-N concentrations
suggests that the groundwater vulnerability map was consistent with observed
nitrate-N contamination.

Introduction

Strategies for protecting groundwater aquifer from contaminations like nitrate-N rather than
development of new water resources and supply projects may prove to be in many cases the
optimal policy. Removal of nitrate from groundwater aquifer is often technically problematic
and costly, and finding alternative sources for water supply is not always possible. So,
groundwater aquifer vulnerability to nitrate has become a major concern of planners, decision
makers, and water managers involved with managing the quality of water in relation to human
health. In recognition of the need for effective and efficient methods for protecting groundwater
resources from future contamination, scientists and resource managers have sought to develop
techniques for predicting which areas are more likely than others to become contaminated as a
result of activities at or near the land surface (National Research Council, 1993). This concept
has been widely termed to groundwater vulnerability to contamination. To tackle the
groundwater pollution and to protect its quality in a more scientific and efficient way, the many
overlay index methods are used. The most widely used among these techniques include GOD

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November 20-21, 2014

International Symposium
Geohazards: Science, Engineering and Management

(Foster, 1987), IRISH (Daly and Drew, 1999), AVI (van Stemproot et al., 1993), DRASTIC
(Aller et al., 1987), SINTACS (Verba and Zaporozec, 1994) and EPIK technique ((Doerfliger
and Zwahlen, 1997). Among them, DRASTIC is widely applied either in its original form or
modified form in various countries (Lynch et al., 1997; Fritch et al., 2000; Ei-Naqa, 2004;
Babiker et al., 2005; Rahman, 2008; Pathak et al., 2009; Yin et al., 2013; Duarte et al., 2014;
Neshat et al., 2014a, b; Kumar et al., 2014 etc.). DRASTIC acronym stands for the seven
hydrogeological parameters; depth to water, recharge, aquifer media, soil type, topography
(slope), impact on the vadose zone media and hydraulic conductivity of the aquifer. However,
groundwater vulnerability mapping using overlay index methods are not easy task due to
inherent uncertainty and limited input data. Therefore, a fuzzy model has been applied to solve
this problem incorporating the non linear mapping of intrinsic groundwater vulnerability
concept benefiting from fuzzy engine and expert knowledge-based DRASTIC parameters
(Dixon, 2005; Nobre et al., 2007; Afshar et al., 2007; Pathak and Hirtasuka, 2011; Rezai et al.,
2013). But, the exponential increase in rules will be problematic in most cases. In order to
overcome the problem of rule explosion, the hierarchical rule techniques in the fuzzy system
design is very useful. So, this paper presents fuzzy inference system (FIS) as an alternative to
the conventional overlay index method for the evaluation of groundwater vulnerability to
nitrate pollution in watershed scale within Geographic Information System (GIS) environment.
A hierarchical FIS model has been developed benefiting from expert knowledge-based
DRASTIC system to produce groundwater vulnerability maps showing the likelihood of
groundwater pollution due to different hydrogeological factors. A case study relating to
groundwater vulnerability assessment in shallow aquifer of Kathmandu basin, Nepal has been
accomplished. Nitrate-N risk map has been developed by combining groundwater vulnerability
and nitrate hazard maps to identify areas that currently are at risk.

2.

Material and methods

2.1 Fuzzy logic approach

The basic concept in fuzzy logic is quite simple; statements are not only true or false but
also represents the degree of truth or degree of falseness for each input. Fuzzy sets are defined
by their membership function, which are therefore the core of the entire concept. There are
different types of membership functions such as continuous piece-wise linear functions
(triangular and trapezoidal shape) and continuous piecewise exponential membership functions
such as Gauss functions. Fuzzy sets and fuzzy operators are the subjects and verbs of fuzzy
logic. The IF-THEN rule statements are used to formulate the conditional statements that
comprise fuzzy logic. The standard operations correspond to a logical IF-THEN base with
AND, OR and NOT operators, for instance IF x is A, and y is B, THEN z is C, where A,
B, and C are linguistic values defined by fuzzy sets on the ranges (universes of discourse) X, Y
and Z respectively. The IF-part of the rule is called the antecedent or premise, while the THENpart of the rule is called the consequent or conclusion. Fuzzy inference is the process of
formulating the mapping from a given input to an output using fuzzy logic that employs the
rules upon which decisions are made. The process of fuzzy inference involves: membership
functions, logical operations, and IF-THEN rules. Generally, a fuzzy rule based model is
comprised of fuzzification of input variables, application of fuzzy operator in the antecedent

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November 20-21, 2014

International Symposium
Geohazards: Science, Engineering and Management

(degree of fulfillment), implication from antecedent to the consequent (inference), aggregation

of the consequents across the rules, and defuzzification.
A large number of input variables results the exponential increase in rules which will
be problematic in the use of single layer fuzzy inference system. In order to overcome the
problem of rule explosion, a multilayer fuzzy inference system (hierarchical rule techniques) in
the fuzzy system design is very useful and so was selected for design in this study. A
methodology outline of hierarchical fuzzy inference system for the evaluation of aquifer
groundwater vulnerability index using DRASTIC parameters is shown in Figure 1a. For design
of hierarchical fuzzy model, MATLAB(R) fuzzy toolbox was employed. The output of this FIS
model was exported to GIS to develop groundwater vulnerability map which was finally
combined with nitrate hazard map to develop nitrate risk map. The applied methodology is
outlined in Figure 1b.
Depth to
water table
(D)

FIS1

Recharge
(R)

FIS2
FIS3

Aquifer
media (A)

FIS4
Soil media
(S)
FIS5

Topography
(T)

FIS6
(Vulne
rability
index)

Impact on
vadose zone
(I)
Hydraulic
conductivity
(C)
(a)

Nitrate-N data in
GW wells

Nitrate-N hazard
map

FIS output (GW

vulnerability
index)

GW vulnerability
map

Groundwater
nitrate-N
risk map

(b)
Figure 1 Methodology outline of (a) hierarchical fuzzy inference system for the evaluation of aquifer
groundwater vulnerability using DRASTIC parameters, (b) preparation of Nitrate-N risk map

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November 20-21, 2014

International Symposium
Geohazards: Science, Engineering and Management

The membership functions can be constructed from several basic functions such as
piecewise linear functions, the Gaussian distribution function, the sigmoid curve, quadratic and
cubic polynomial curves. The triangular and trapezoidal membership functions are the simplest
and have been used in this study due to their modeling flexibility. Each input domain was
divided into three sub-domains (i.e., Low, Medium, and High) and output domain
divided into five sub-domains (i.e., Very low, Low, Medium, High and Very high).
In general, fuzzy rule-based systems benefit from rule bases which mainly are organized using
experts knowledge. This study employs expert knowledge from the general knowledge of the
experts who developed the DRASTIC system, however one may benefit from knowledge of
local experts and knowledge obtained from computer simulation to improve the rules and
system performances. For example, the rules are of the form; If D (depth to groundwater) is L
(low) AND R (recharge) is H (high) THEN FIS1 is VH (very high)
.
All seven input data layers used in DRASTIC system were generated and/or obtained
from its original source as a point, line, or polygon layer. Then, all seven parameters
contributing to groundwater vulnerability were converted from vector (point, line, or polygon)
to raster (grid) of 30 m x 30 m grid resolution using the GIS as shown as Figure 2.

Figure 2, Seven input raster layers to compute vulnerability index

All the raster map layers were then converted to ASCII format to feed as input
parameter to FIS model. The Figure 1a clearly reveals that the first two input parameters (depth
to water table and Net recharge) are aggregated in first model (FIS1) and the output from first
model is aggregated with third input variable (Aquifer type) in the next stage model (FIS2). In
the subsequent manner, FIS5 is aggregated with that of the last input variable hydraulic
conductivity) to obtain the groundwater vulnerability to pollution index from FIS6. Fuzzy
inference used here is a minimum Mamdani inference and a central defuzzification method.

3.

Results and discussion

To demonstrate the performance of proposed fuzzy models, a case study relating to

groundwater vulnerability assessment in shallow aquifer of Kathmandu basin, Nepal has been
accomplished. The output of hierarchical fuzzy inference model was exported to GIS to

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November 20-21, 2014

International Symposium
Geohazards: Science, Engineering and Management

develop groundwater vulnerability map of shallow aquifer in Kathmandu basin, Nepal as

shown as Figure 3a.

(a)
(b)
Figure 3, (a) Groundwater vulnerability map and (b) Nitrate-N hazard map in shallow aquifer of
Kathmandu basin, Nepal

Figure 3a shows the relative degree of groundwater vulnerability to contamination. A

high index indicates the capacity of the hydrogeologic environment and the landscape factors to
readily move waterborne contaminants into the groundwater and consequently need to be
managed more closely. Low index represents groundwater that is better protected from
contaminant leaching by natural environment. Nitrate-N data sampled from more than 100
groundwater sources of shallow aquifer in Kathmandu basin was used to develop nitrate-N
hazard map. Inverse distance weighting (IDW) interpolation technique in GIS environment was
chosen to create nitrate-N hazard map of study area. The Figure 3b shows the nitrate-N hazard
map of shallow aquifer of Kathmandu. The results show that the northern part of the
Kathmandu basin and highly permeable alluvial deposits are dominated by very high
vulnerability level is also under the threat of high nitrate-N pollution hazard. Nearly 10% of the
study area exceeded WHO guidelines of 10 mg/L nitrate-N value and nearly 60% of shallow
aquifer have impacted level of nitrate-N, i.e. between 2 and 10 mg/L (Figure 5a).
Because of no universal and clear-cut definition of vulnerability, measurable data to
directly quantify the vulnerability may not be available. However, the spatial distribution of
contaminant sources like nitrate may be utilised to validate the vulnerability result. Figure 4
clearly shows a significant positive correlation between nitrate concentration and the
groundwater vulnerability levels with a coefficient value of 0.52. These results suggest that the
groundwater vulnerability map of shallow groundwater aquifer in Kathmandu basin was
generally consistent with observed nitrate contamination near the water table. This result also
confirms the validation and reliability of hierarchical FIS model, which reflect an aquifers
inherent capacity to become contaminated.

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V u l n e r a b i lit y I n d e x

Kathmandu, Nepal
November 20-21, 2014

International Symposium
Geohazards: Science, Engineering and Management

1
0 .9 5
0 .9
0 .8 5

R = 0 .5 2

0 .8
0 .7 5
0 .7
0 .6 5
0 .6
0 .5 5
0 .5
0

10

15

20

25

30

N it r at e -N (m g/ L )

Figure 4, Relationship between nitrate concentration in wells and groundwater vulnerability in

Kathmandu basin
200.00
171.54

180.00
160.00
Area (sq. km. )

140.00
120.00
100.00

99.31

80.00
60.00
40.00

21.70

20.00
0.00
No hazarad zone

Hazard zone

Veryhazard zone

Nitrate-N

(a)
(b)
Figure 5, (a) Nitrate-N hazard level, (b) Nitrate-N risk map of shallow aquifer of Kathmandu
basin

4.

Conclusions

The DRASTIC parameters were introduced to a hierarchical fuzzy inference system in order to
develop groundwater vulnerability map which helps to rank the highly vulnerable area or low
vulnerable area in the shallow groundwater aquifer of Kathmandu basin. The proposed
hierarchical fuzzy inference model in this study has become very useful in order to overcome
the problem of exponential increase in rules due to a large number of input variables results. In
addition to the development of groundwater vulnerability map, spatial distribution map of

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Kathmandu, Nepal
November 20-21, 2014

International Symposium
Geohazards: Science, Engineering and Management

nitrate has been developed to show the level of nitrate hazard in the study basin. The
combination of groundwater vulnerability and nitrate hazard maps can be used to identify areas
that currently are at risk and help identify areas where groundwater has been affected by human
activities. A significant positive correlation between nitrate concentration and the groundwater
vulnerability levels suggests that the groundwater vulnerability map of shallow groundwater
aquifer in Kathmandu basin was generally consistent with observed nitrate contamination near
the water table.

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