Risk assessment of groundwater contamination: a multilevel fuzzy comprehensive evaluation approach based on DRASTIC model.
Groundwater contamination is a serious threat to water supply. Risk assessment of groundwater contamination is an effective way to protect the safety of groundwater resource. Groundwater is a complex and fuzzy system with many uncertainties, which is impacted by different geological and hydrological factors. In order to deal with the uncertainty in the risk assessment of groundwater contamination, we propose an approach with analysis hierarchy process and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation integrated together. Firstly, the risk factors of groundwater contamination are identified by the sources-pathway-receptor-consequence method, and a corresponding index system of risk assessment based on DRASTIC model is established. Due to the complexity in the process of transitions between the possible pollution risks and the uncertainties of factors, the method of analysis hierarchy process is applied to determine the weights of each factor, and the fuzzy sets theory is adopted to calculate the membership degrees of each factor. Finally, a case study is presented to illustrate and test this methodology. It is concluded that the proposed approach integrates the advantages of both analysis hierarchy process and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation, which provides a more flexible and reliable way to deal with the linguistic uncertainty and mechanism uncertainty in groundwater contamination without losing important information.
College of Hydropower and Information Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China ; School of Municipal and Geomatics Engineering, Hunan City University, Yiyang 413000, China.
Qiuwen
Q
Zhang
College of Hydropower and Information Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China.
Xiaohong
X
Yang
College of Hydropower and Information Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China ; Institute of Disaster Prevention, Beijing 101601, China.
Yan
Y
Zhang
College of Hydropower and Information Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China.
Ming
M
Zhong
D017143:Fuzzy Logic; D060587:Groundwater; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D018570:Risk Assessment; D014876:Water Pollution; D014881:Water Supply