Strategy for groundwater management in developing countries: A case study in northern Costa Rica

SummaryOn the basis of a case study in northern Costa Rica, in an area of one of the country’s most important volcanic aquifers, we developed a GIS-based groundwater management system suitable for the limited financial, technical and data resources of developing countries. Input and processing of attribute data-like information about groundwater wells or geological outcrops are realized with the help of an ACCESS database. The GIS-platform ArcView is used for input and analysis of all types of spatial data, e.g. maps of geology, hydrogeology, land use, or locations of groundwater wells. A three-dimensional model of the subsurface geology is constructed with the help of the interactive 3D-Modeller RHINOCEROS (R) – NURBS modelling for Windows. The GIS-platform ArcView is used for the final integrated spatial analysis of the three-dimensional model and the generated spatial and attribute databases. The basic concept for data analysis is a five-step numerical index as a simple but efficient matter of standardization in order to take into account a wide spectrum of input data of varying quality and precision. As an example of application, the assessment of the vulnerability of aquifers is presented, which can be calculated on the basis of the hydrogeological profile (sequence of different strata with varying permeability), the infiltration potential of the soil layer and the distance to fault zones for each location of the study area.