Hazard and risk intensity maps for water-bearing units: a case study

Abstract

Fresh groundwater from intergranular and carbonate aquifers are considered as the valuable resources for domestic, agricultural and industrial water supplies of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region. A comprehensive approach to groundwater protection using the intrinsic vulnerability, hazard and risk intensity mapping was proposed by the European COST Action 620. The current article applied all the components of the above mentioned Pan-European approach to assess the risk harmfulness in the Sulaimani sub-basin by combining hydrogeological parameters using the DRASTIC system and the hazard components by taking the product of the weighted hazard value (HI), the ranking factor (Qn) and the reduction factor (Rf). The hazard map was constructed from twenty-six hazard feature types of the point, line and polygon. Their distributions, extents and of harmfulness degrees vary sharply from one place to another. Results of the risk intensity map divided the area into five classes as “no or very low, low, moderate, high and very high” risk zones. Fortunately, the majority of the area of interest is classified as very low to low contamination potential due to the limited impact of hazards as well as low groundwater vulnerabilities. The zones with moderate-risk potentials clustered in industrialized areas.