Management of Groundwater Resources

Groundwater management aims to achieve certain strategies for sustainable use of the resources. Some of the objectives of the groundwater management models are:

1. 1.  Maximization of total withdrawal from an aquifer.

2.  Minimization of cost of per unit volume of water supplied to the consumers.

3. Maximization of net benefit of a project related to the supply of water for municipal, industrial, agricultural, etc. purposes.

4. Minimization of total consumption of energy of project related to the extraction and distribution of groundwater.

5.  Minimization of an error function obtained from the sum of the absolute difference between actual and predicted values of certain water level.

In achieving these objectives, certain restrictions have to be satisfied for obtaining physically meaningful optimal policies. These restrictions are known as constraints. Some of the commonly applicable constraints in groundwater management models are:

1. 1. Water level at any location in an aquifer should not go below certain value. This constraint will put restriction on the depletion of water table due to pumping of water from an aquifer.

2. Water level at any location in an aquifer should not rise above certain level. This is required to avoid water logging of an area and also to dewater an area under construction.

3. Limits on the maximum and minimum withdrawal of water from an aquifer.

4. Spring discharge should not go below certain specified value.

5. Base flow of a stream or a river should not go below certain minimum value.

6. Quality of pumped water should not deteriorate below certain specific value.

7. Limit on land subsidence.