Journal of Hydrology 565 (2018) 248–261

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Journal of Hydrology
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jhydrol

Research papers

Groundwater spring potential modelling: Comprising the capability and T

robustness of three different modeling approaches
⁎
Omid Rahmatia, Seyed Amir Naghibib, Himan Shahabic, Dieu Tien Buid, Biswajeet Pradhane,f, ,
Ali Azarehg, Elham Rafiei-Sardooih, Aliakbar Nazari Samanii, Assefa M. Melessej
a
Young Researchers and Elites Club, Khorramabad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Khorramabad, Iran
b
Department of Watershed Management Engineering, Tarbiat Modares University, Mazandaran, Iran
c
Department of Geomorphology, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Kurdistan, Sanandaj, Iran
d
Geographic Information System Group, Department of Business and IT, University College of Southeastern Norway, Gullbringvegen 36, N-3800 Bø i Telemark, Norway
e
Center for Advanced Modeling and Geospatial System (CAMGIS), Faculty of Engineering and IT, University of Technology Sydney, 2007 NSW, Australia
f
Department of Energy and Mineral Resources Engineering, Choongmu-gwan, Sejong University, 209 Neungdong-ro, Gwangjin-gu, Seoul 05006, Republic of Korea
g
Department of Geography, University of Jiroft, Kerman, Iran
h
Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Jiroft, Kerman, Iran
i
Department of Reclamation of Arid and Mountainous Regions, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Tehran, Karaj, Iran
j
Department of Earth and Environment, AHC-5-390, Florida International University, USA

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

This manuscript was handled by T. Simmons, Sustainable water resources management in arid and semi-arid areas needs robust models, which allow accurate
Editor-in-Chief, with the assistance of G. Syme, and reliable predictive modeling. This issue has motivated the researchers to develop hybrid models that offer
Associate Editor solutions on modelling problems and accurate predictions of groundwater potential zonation. For this purpose,
Keywords: this research aims to investigate the capability and robustness of a novel hybrid model, namely the logistic model
Hybrid model tree (LMT) and compares it with state-of-the-art models such as the support vector machine and C4.5 models that
Groundwater spring locate potential zones for groundwater springs. A spring location dataset consisting of 359 springs was provided
Robustness by field surveys and national reports and from which three different sample data sets (S1–S3) were randomly
GIS
prepared (70% for training and 30% for validation). Additionally, 16 spring-related factors were analyzed using
Logistic model tree
regression logistic analysis to find which factors play a significant role in spring occurrence. Twelve significant
geo-environmental and morphometric factors were identified and applied in all models. The accuracy of models
was evaluated by three different threshold-dependent and –Independent methods including efficiency (E), true
skill statistic (TSS), and area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (AUC-ROC) methods. Results
showed that the LMT model had the highest accuracy performance for all three validation datasets
(Emean = 0.860, TSSmean = 0.718, AUC-ROCmean = 0.904); although a slight sensitivity to change in input data
was sometimes observed for this model. Furthermore, the findings showed that relative slope position (RSP) was
the most important factor followed by distance from faults and lithology.

1. Introduction
Groundwater has always been one of the most precious natural re-
sources in the world due to its importance at different levels in society
such as residential, agricultural and industrial water supply. In addi-
tion, as a non-renewable resource, groundwater has important attri-
butes such as low pollution vulnerability, water quality, steady tem-
perature, low susceptibility to environmental disasters and climate
change impacts (Chowdhury et al., 2009; Manap et al., 2013; Neshat
et al., 2014). In fact, one third of the world population are reliant on
groundwater supplies for their needs, which has led to substantial
global overuse of this valuable resource. The sustainable development
of groundwater in arid and semi-arid areas is a crucial issue to maintain
fresh and usable water resources (Anbazhagan and Jothibasu, 2016).
The existence and movement of groundwater depend on various geo-
environmental variables (Oh et al., 2011). In Iran, where two-thirds of
its landmass is categorized as arid and semi-arid desert land, has
struggled with water scarcity during the last decades. Agriculture is one

⁎
Corresponding author at: Center for Advanced Modeling and Geospatial System (CAMGIS), Faculty of Engineering and IT, University of Technology Sydney, 2007
NSW, Australia.
E-mail address: Biswajeet.Pradhan@uts.edu.au (B. Pradhan).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2018.08.027
Received 26 February 2018; Received in revised form 9 August 2018; Accepted 11 August 2018
Available online 15 August 2018
0022-1694/ © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
O. Rahmati et al.
Fig. 1. Location map of springs with a hillshade of the Bojnourd region, Khorasan Shomali, Iran. Field photographs of some spring occurred in the study area: (A)
Kenare Spring, and (B) Rodan Spring.
of the most crucial economic sectors in Iran, and therefore, knowledge
of groundwater supplies and its potential, especially in water-scarce
areas, can be helpful in order to overcome this crisis (Razandi et al.,
2015; Rahmati et al., 2016).
Drilling, geophysical, geological, and hydrological methods, are
traditional approaches used to map groundwater resources (Rahmati
et al., 2016). Geographical information system (GIS) and remote sen-
sing methods have major potential for groundwater potential mapping
and assessment (Oh et al., 2011). GIS has the ability to work with large
spatial datasets and has application in environmental and geological
fields (Oh et al., 2011; Oh and Pradhan, 2011; Pham et al., 2016;
Rahmati et al., 2016; Nampak et al., 2018; Tehrany et al. 2014).
According to the literature, various types of GIS-based models have
been employed for groundwater potential modelling including the
frequency ratio (Oh et al., 2011; Moghaddam et al., 2015; Razandi
et al., 2015; Guru et al., 2016), weights-of-evidence modeling (Corsini
et al., 2009; Lee et al., 2012; Ozdemir, 2011a; Ghorbani Nejad et al.,
2017; Sahoo et al., 2017a), Dempster–Shafer theory (Rahmati and
Melesse, 2016), multi-criteria decision analysis (Chowdhury et al.,
2009; Gupta and Srivastava, 2010; Pradhan, 2010), logistic regression
(LR) (Ozdemir, 2011b), evidential belief function (Mogaji et al., 2015;
Nampak et al., 2014), certainty factor (Razandi et al., 2015; Hou et al.,
2018), statistical index (Falah et al., 2017), index of entropy (Al-Abadi
and Shahid, 2015), decision tree (Chenini and Mammou, 2010), and
multivariate adaptive regression spline (Zabihi et al., 2016). Moreover,
many studies have applied logistic regression (Ozdemir, 2011a, b; Chen
et al., 2018), and analytical hierarchy process (Adiat et al., 2012;
Rahmati et al., 2015; Shekhar and Pandey, 2015; Sahoo et al., 2017b;
249
Journal of Hydrology 565 (2018) 248–261
Patra et al., 2018; Yin et al., 2018) for the GPM purpose. Recently,
machine learning techniques (MLTs) have attracted the attention of
researchers because they recognize patterns hidden in historical
groundwater data and capture the nonlinear relation between variables
(e.g., Suryanarayana et al., 2014; Yoon et al., 2016; Rezaie-balf et al.,
2017; Sahoo et al., 2017c; Barzegar et al., 2018; Tongal and Booij,
2018). Different MLTs such as random forest (Rahmati et al., 2016),
classification and regression tree (Naghibi and Pourghasemi, 2015),
boosted regression tree (Naghibi et al., 2016; Golkarian et al., 2018),
maximum entropy (Rahmati et al., 2016), generalized additive model
(Falah et al., 2017), artificial neural network model (Corsini et al.,
2009), and aquifer sustainability factor (Smith et al., 2010) have been
found useful in the field of modeling groundwater potential.
Among all the statistical methods, LR is a robust model which has
some advantages in terms of strict assumptions prior to study and
capability for ensembling with other models. Another advantage of LR
model is that it represents the predicted probabilities for given patterns
(Pradhan, 2010; Dong et al., 2011). However, it still has some draw-
backs in analyzing the classes of each conditioning factor (Tehrany
et al., 2013, 2015). In addition, its relative performance depends on the
characteristics and the size of the dataset (Landwehr et al., 2005). To
overcome these drawbacks in modelling, a hybrid model called logistic
model tree (LTM) which is based on the LR model and C4.5 decision
tree has been proposed and applied in different fields of study such as
flood prediction (Chapi et al., 2017), landslide (Bui et al., 2017a; Chen
et al., 2017b), and satellite image classification (Colkesen and
Kavzoglu, 2017). The major aim of this research is the capability of
different types of machine learning models including LMT, C4.5, and
O. Rahmati et al.
SVM to locate potential zones for groundwater springs and to reach this
goal, the Bojnourd area in Iran was selected. Another main reason that
makes this study valuable and independent is that the LTM and C4.5
decision tree models are applied separately for the first time in
groundwater field and results are compared together with the support
vector machine (SVM) model in the studied region. Moreover, the re-
sults could be implemented in further natural resources management
and planning. Therefore, the specific objectives of the current research
are to: i) spatially predict the groundwater spring potential using dif-
ferent state-of-the-art models including LMT, C4.5, and SVM, ii) in-
vestigate their performance and capability based on the evaluation
criteria, and iii) explore the robustness and sensitivity of all models to
the random splitting of input data.
2. Material and methods
2.1. Study area
This study focuses on the Bojnourd region of north Khorasan pro-
vince, Iran, which is situated between latitudes 37° 15′ and 37° 35′ N,
and longitudes 57° 03′ and 57° 40′ E longitudes. Altitude of the
Bojnourd region ranges between 875 and 2968 m. Annual precipitation
is 272 mm and the low and high temperatures respectively are 6.8 °C
and 19.7 °C according to Khorasan-Shomali Methorological
Organization (http://www.nkhmet.ir/index.aspx?tempname=english
&lang=2&sub=0). Fig. 1 indicates the location of the studied region.
Karstic structures in Iran are segmented into three different zones in-
cluding the Zagros, the Central Zone and the Sanandaj-Sirjan Fault
Area. In these karstic areas, more than 18,000 m of exploration dril-
ling—excluding alluvium plain—have taken place (Afrasiabian, 1986).
In addition, there are numerous faults and many folds in the study area
which play important roles in the development of springs. Groundwater
resources provide 88 percent of the water resource for Khorasan pro-
vince. This province has 17,000 km2 of karst masses, which are used as
karst water resources in order to supply drinking water for citizens of
north and Razavi Khorasan provinces. Furthermore, the area of the
north Khorasan province is 248,000 km2 with a high population of
6,000,000 people. Farming is the major activity in this province. North
Khorasan is exposed to an extreme fluctuation in climate (Sanjani et al.,
2011).
2.2. Data used
2.2.1. Spring dataset
In the study region a total of 359 springs were identified based on
both multiple field surveys and documents available from the Iranian
Department of Water Resources Management for the year 2017 (Fig. 1,
Table 1). Monitoring data of these springs in the study area reflected
that spring groundwater discharge peaks in March or April and de-
creases until late August or September (Iranian Department of Water
Resources Management (IDWRM), 2015). The yield of springs ranges
from a maximum of about 0.8 m3/s in the winter to a minimum of about
0.0005 m3/s in the summer. In addition, in the study area, there are
many low-yielding springs that outcrop at locations where the local
groundwater table intersects the land surface. Such springs are often
Table 1
The spatial database used for modelling and analyses.
Category Data type Mapping method/source
Groundwater springs Point Analysis of previous inventories (available in IDWRM); field survey
Digital elevation model (DEM) Grid Analysis of DEM dataset of Iranian National Cartographic Center
Land use map Grid Analysis of land use database (Ministry of Agriculture)
Geological map Polygon Refinement of existing geologic maps (1:10,000); field survey
Soil map Grid Analysis of soil database (Ministry of Agriculture)
IDWRM: Iranian Department of Water Resources Management.
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Journal of Hydrology 565 (2018) 248–261
temporal and were neglected in the analysis.
For this analysis, the spring inventory locations were randomly di-
vided into two groups 70% (251 spring locations) and 30% (108 spring
locations) for the purpose of training and validation, respectively. In
other words, the validation group were determined through a rando-
mization and was not used in model building. It is generally re-
commended in spatial modeling to use approximately equal proportions
of spring-present (1) and spring-absent (0) pixels (Corsini et al., 2009;
Ozdemir, 2011b). Keeping this in mind, the 359 spring-present pixels
and randomly selected 359 spring-absent pixels were used in the
modeling.
It needs to be clarified that to investigate the robustness of the al-
gorithms, three training and three validation datasets (S1–S3) were
created by implementing the random selection of dependent varia-
ble—spring locations—in a GIS environment (Fig. 2) (Conoscenti et al.,
2014; Angileri et al., 2016). The training datasets consisted of 251
spring locations, while validation datasets included 108 spring loca-
tions.
2.2.2. Geo-environmental factors
There are no universal guidelines for selecting groundwater con-
ditioning factors (GCF). In the present study, sixteen geo-environmental
factors were selected based on the literature to evaluate groundwater
spring potential including (e.g., Corsini et al., 2009; Ozdemir 2011a,b;
Oh et al., 2011; Moghaddam et al., 2015; Naghibi et al., 2017a–c; Chen
et al., 2018). Those were altitude, aspect, plan curvature, profile cur-
vature, slope, land use/cover, lithology, soil, distance from fault, dis-
tance from stream, stream density, topographic wetness index (TWI),
convergence index (CI), relative slope position (RSP), topographic po-
sition index (TPI), and terrain roughness index (TRI). In order to
identify factors which, have a significant relationship with groundwater
springs, a logistic regression was performed. In other word, logistic
regression establishes a functional relationship between spring loca-
tions (dependent variable) and different conditioning factors (in-
dependent variables) that are recognized as playing a role in spring
development (Ozdemir, 2011a,b). A detailed description and back-
ground on the logistic regression method can be found in Hosmer et al.
(2013). The general form of logistic regression is as follows:
1
P=
1 + e−Z (1)
where P is the probability of an event occurring and varies from 0 to 1
on an S-shaped curve. Z is a linear combination which can be defined
as:
Z = a + b1 x1 + b2 x2 + ⋯+bn x n (2)
where a is the intercept, x1… xn represent the values of the independent
variables, and b1…bn represent the coefficients. In fact, this statistical
method examines the relative strength and significance of the factors
(Tehrany et al., 2013, 2015). In this study, a forward stepwise logistic
regression was performed in SPSS software to analyze data. All factors
which have a significance value (Sig.) of less than 0.5 were accepted as
influential predictor variables. After the forward stepwise logistic re-
gression analysis, twelve GCFs which are altitude, aspect, slope, con-
vergence index, distance from fault, distance from stream, stream
Scale
1:50,000
20 × 20
1:50,000
1:50,000
1:50,000
O. Rahmati et al. Journal of Hydrology 565 (2018) 248–261

Fig. 2. Three sample data sets for positive/presence cases (i.e. spring occurrence) and negative/absence cases (i.e. non-spring): (a) group 1, (b) group 2, and (c) group
3.

Table 2 ArcGIS 10.2 and a DEM of the studied region, and was considered as a
Variables (conditioning factors) retained in the logistic regression model and continuous factor. Aspect which defines exposure to sunlight (Dai et al.,
their coefficients. 2001) and subsequently impacts evaporation was also considered as a
Variables β SE Wald Df Sig. predictive factor. This GCF was also prepared and classified into nine
classes of main and sub-main classes in addition to a flat category.
Altitude 0.722 0.291 6.155 1 0.000 The TPI shows the corresponding position of each pixel. It can be
Aspect –0.351 0.311 1.273 1 0.001
computed as (Eq. (3)) (Guisan et al., 1999; De Reu et al., 2013):
Distance from fault 1.243 0.266 21.836 1 0.000
Lithology 1.155 0.248 21.690 1 0.000 Epixel
Distance from stream 0.528 0.342 2.383 1 0.001 TPI =
Stream density –0.553 0.416 1.767 1 0.010
Esurrounding (3)
RSP 1.668 0.155 115.805 1 0.000
TWI –0.48 0.343 1.958 1 0.001
where, Epixel shows the altitude of the cell, and Esurrounding depicts the
TPI 0.477 0.38 1.575 1 0.000 mean altitude of the neighbor pixels.
Slope 0.169 0.485 0.121 1 0.010 The TWI calculates the degree of accumulation of water at a certain
CI 0.152 0.413 0.135 1 0.010 pixel in the studied region (Pourghasemi et al., 2013). The TWI can be
computed by as below:

density, RSP, TPI, TRI, TWI, and lithology were selected because they
were statistically significant (Table 2). However, some variables such as
the soil, land use/cover, plan curvature, and profile curvature were not
found to be statistically significant in the model.
The basic maps such as geology, land use, and soil were obtained
from the Iranian Department of Water Resources Management and
Iranian Department of Geology. In addition, a digital elevation model
(DEM) (20 × 20 m pixel size) was also obtained from Iranian National
Cartographic Center. For preparing the DEM-derived layers, the DEM
layer was used. Altitude indirectly impacts groundwater potential; for
example, higher elevations have higher slope and infiltration decreases
(Mangangka, 2008; Zapata et al., 2000; Althuwaynee et al., 2012,
2014) accordingly, this factor was also used in the modelling process.
Slope has an important function in infiltration and influences surface
runoff (Sarkar et al., 2001). Therefore, this map was generated using
TWI = ln(α tan β ) (4)
where, α depicts area which drains to a point, and β shows the slope
angle at the pixel.
The TRI represents the convex and concave slopes (Althuwaynee
et al., 2014; Kalantar et al., 2017). This factor can be calculated as:
TRI = |x|(max 2 −min2 ) (5)
where, x depicts elevation of each neighbor cell to cell (0,0) (m), max
and min show the largest and smallest elevation value among nine
neighbor pixels, respectively.
Two stream-based layers such as distance from streams and stream
density were also produced using Euclidean distance and line density
functions in ArcGIS 10.5. These layers were implemented in the mod-
elling process since they are known to influencing groundwater po-
tential (Liu and Yamanaka, 2012; Nampak et al., 2014).

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Table 3 ▪ Estimate wi and response z i

Lithology of the study area.
Group Lithology
Cretaceous (C) Olive green glauconitic sandstone and shale
Early Cretaceous (EC) Ammonite bearing shale with intercation of orbitolin
limestone
Jurassic-Cretaceous (JC) Pale red argillaceous limestone, sandstone and
conglomerate
Miocene (M) Red marl, gypsiferous marl, sandstone and
conglomerate
Quaternary (Q) Low level piedment fan and vally terrace deposits
Silurian (S) Coral limestone and dolomite, shale, sandstone
Triassic-Jurassic (TJ) Subordinate sandy limestone, dark grey shale and
sandstone
The lithology is a very essential GCF, as it determines porosity and
permeability of an aquifer (Adiat et al., 2012). To investigate the in-
fluence of the lithology, lithological categories were extracted from a 1:
100,000 scale geological map of the studied region, obtained from Ir-
anian Department of Geology. Lithological characteristics of study area
are presented in Table 3. In addition, a layer of distance from faults was
produced where the faults were extracted from the geological map of
the studied region. All of GCF layers are illustrated in Fig. 3.
2.3. Methodology
The methodology of study is explained in following sections and is
shown in Fig. 4.
2.3.1. Description of models
2.3.1.1. Logistic model tree. The logistic model tree (LMT) is a typical
decision tree classification algorithm with a root node, inner nodes, and
leaves; however, LMT is difference from other tree algorithms in the
process of growing, splitting, and pruning. Pruning is a technique in
machine learning that reduces the size of decision trees by removing
sections of the tree that provide little power to classify instances. In
addition, it often reduces the complexity of the final classifier, and
hence improves predictive accuracy by the reduction of overfitting.
Herein, logistic regressions (Eq. (1)) were built at the nodes and leaves
using the LogitBoost algorithm (Doetsch et al., 2009) whereas the C4.5
rule (Quinlan, 1993) was used to split samples for tree growing and the
CART algorithm (Breiman et al., 1984) was employed to prune the tree
and prevent overfitting (Landwehr et al., 2005).
Let S be a spring groundwater training dataset S = (x i , yi )in= 1 where n
is the total number of the training samples, x i ∈ RD is the spring
groundwater conditioning factors, and yi is the class label such as spring
groundwater occurrence (sg) and non-spring groundwater occurrence
(nsg). The goal of the training process is to build a tree-like structure
model that can separate samples into two classes. The probability va-
lues belong to the spring groundwater occurrence class is used as spring
groundwater potential index. The process of building the LMT model is
summarized below.
Step 1: Establishment of the root node
Using the training sample, the root node of the LMT tree model is
constructed where a logistic regression model (Eq. (6)) is built with the
help of the LogitBoost algorithm. Thus, additive logistic regression is
performed and is the optimization process with the aim of minimizing
the logistic loss function (∑ ln (1 + e−yi f (xi) ) ) using Newton steps as
below:
(1) Using the training dataset S, compute: (i) initial weight wi = 1/ n ;
(2) initial committee function f (x ) = 0 , and probability
p (x ) = p (sg / x ) = 1/2 .
(2) Repeat i = 1 to N iterations (we used the default N = 200):
wi = p (x i )[1−p (x i )] (6)
zi = [yi∗ −p (x i )]/ wi, where yi∗ = (yi + 1)/2 (7)
▪ Generating a new dataset (x i , z i )in= 1 and fit the regression function
f (x )
f (x ) = ∑ βi xi + β0 (8)
where βi is the logistic coefficient.
1
▪ Update f (x ) ← f (x ) + 2 fiteration (x ) and p (x i )
exp fsg, nsg (x )
p (x i ) =
exp fsg (x ) + exp fnsg (x ) (9)
(3) Output the final LMT classifier is obtained as Sign[ f (x ) ].
Step 2: Tree growing
The tree is grown by splitting the training samples at the root node
using the C4.5 splitting rule [52] to create subsets for inner nodes.
Subsequently, using the subsets, logistic regression models for these
inner nodes are constructed using the LogitBoost algorithm mentioned
above. The tree is allowed to continue to grow in the same procedure
until nodes have less than 15 samples as the stopping criteria. These
nodes are converted to leaves.
Step 3: Tree Pruning
Finally, the tree pruning process is carried out using the CART
pruning scheme (Breiman et al., 1984) to prevent overfitting and bal-
ance the error rate of the LMT model.
2.3.1.2. C4.5 decision tree. The C4.5 DT model which was originally
presented by (Quinlan, 1986), is an extension of ID3 models where
attributes are selected using the (entropy-based) Gain Ratio (GR)
technique for modelling (Chen et al., 2014). The C4.5 DT has two
processes that include tree growth which occurs from a node and is then
split based on the largest value of GR or the smallest value of entropy
and the tree pruning process (Chen et al., 2014). Entropy is a
measurement of uncertainty and in the modeling process it is an
appropriate way to assign an uncertainty score to a stochastic
variable (Thuraisingham and Gottwald, 2006).
Let S is a set of training dataset, f (Yi, S) is the number of cases in the
training dataset S which belong to class Yi (groundwater spring and
non– groundwater spring). The Entropy of the groundwater and non-
groundwater spring at a node f is computed as follows;
Entropy (f ) = − ∑ p (Yj |f )log 2 p (Yj |f )
j (10)
where (Yj |f ) is the relative frequency of node f of the k attribute of f .
The Entropy for a given conditioning factor such as “slope” is obtained
as follows;
k |f j |
EntropySlope (f ) = ∑ |f |
× Entropy (f j )
j=1 (11)
Information Gain (IG) was used to calculate the differences between
the Entropy of the original node and newly a split node which is ob-
tained based on the following equation;
Entropy (Slope ) = Entropy (f )−EntropySlope (f ) (12)
The IG in the tree selects an attribute with many split points. This
process leads to growth of the tree toward continuous attributes.
Therefore, SplitInfo (the IG normalized) is used to detect this challenge.
The following equation shows the SplitInfo for f node

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Fig. 3. Groundwater conditioning factors (the detailed description of lithological codes can be found in Table 1).

v |f j | |f j | the leaf nodes can be computes as follows;

SplitInfo = − ∑ × log 2 ( )
j=1
|f | |f | (13) ngroundwaterspring
Probability(f ) =
(nnon − groundwaterspring + ngroundwaterspring ) (15)
The Gain Ratio (GR) for Slope factor which is the IG rectified by
SplitInfo, denotes as follows; where ngroundwater spring and nnon - groundwater spring are the number of
IG (Slope ) groundwater spring and non- groundwater spring classes.
GR (Slope ) = It is noted that the probability of groundwater and non-groundwater
SplitInfo (Slope ) (14)
springs cannot be utilized as the estimated probability. This is because
To prepare groundwater spring potential mapping, the probability using the above equation (Eq. (15)), the estimated probability calcu-
of groundwater spring and non- groundwater spring classes occurring in lates an extreme value: 0 or 1 in leaf nodes. Therefore, to solve this issue

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Fig. 3. (continued)

the probability is calculated using the smoothing frequencies through and regression issues (Bui et al., 2017a). It is developed based on
ranking leaf nodes using the following equation; statistical learning based theory (non-linear classifiers) and the concept
of the optimal separation hyperplane in order to specify the widest
ngroundwater spring m × Rank (node . parent )
Rank (node. child) = margin in the training data points between two classes (Kavzoglu et al.,
nnon − groundwater spring + ngroundwater spring +m (16) 2015).
where parameter m is obtained as follows: Consider a training dataset x = (x1, x2 , ...,x n ) , where x is the
groundwater spring conditioning factor and y = (y1 , y2 ) is the class label
m = R + (d−1) d × R × K (17) of the dependent variable (groundwater spring and non- groundwater
where R is a constant parameter, K is the global cardinality of the da- spring). The SVM tries to categorize the training dataset into subsets or
taset, and d is the depth of the node. classes (+1, −1) using an optimal separating hyperplane which can be
formulated as follows;
2.3.1.3. Support vector machines. Support Vector Machine (SVM) is one f (x ) = yi (w. x i + b) ⩾ 1−ξi (18)
of the advanced and popular supervised machine learning models
which was developed by Cortes and Vapnik (1995) for classification where the vector w is the vector of weights determined by the model

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Fig. 4. Methodological flowchart of the study.

and specifies the hyperplane orientation of the feature, b is a constant role in the performance of the SVM model (Bui et al., 2017a,b). These
which represents the offset of the hyperplane from the origin, and ξi is parameters are called the hyperparameters of the SVM. The regular-
the positive slack variable. ization parameter controls the trade-off between maximizing the target
The solution of “w” in Eq. (11) using Lagrange multipliers can be margin and minimizing the L1-norm of the margin slack vector of the
found as (Samui, 2008); training data (Friedrichs and Igel, 2005). Therefore, the over-fitting
n n n n problem can be controlled using the C parameter whereby if a large
1
Minimize ∑ αi− ∑ ∑ αi αj yi yj (xi , xj), Subject to ∑ αi yi = 0,0 ⩽ α ⩽ value is used for it, fewer margins and thus decreased training errors
2
i=1 i=1 j=1 i=1 occur and vice versa (Damaševičius, 2010). Additionally, the degree of
C, (19) nonlinearity of the SVM model is controlled by the γ parameter.
The posterior probabilities of the SVM model which is based on the
where αi are the Lagrange multipliers and C is the penalty. The decision sigmoid transformation can be computed using the following equation
function of SVM can be expressed by the following equation; (Platt, 1999);
n
⎛ ⎞ 1
⎜∑ i i i
g(x) = sign αxy +b . p (y = 1 |x )=
⎟ (1 + exp(a . f (x ) + b) ) (23)
⎝ j=1 ⎠ (20)
where a and b are constants. In this study, the above-mentioned
If the linear kernel function cannot separate the hyperplane, some
equation (Eq. (16)) was applied to obtain the posterior probabilities for
non-linear kernel functions are able to do that. Therefore, the decision
each pixel of the study area to prepare the groundwater spring potential
function of SVM can be formulated as follows;
mapping.
n
⎛ ⎞
⎜∑ i i
g(x) = sign α y K (x i , x j ) + b , 2.3.2. Model application
⎟
⎝ j=1 ⎠ (21)
In this research, the input factors were processed, analyzed, and
where K (x i , x j ) is the kernel function. prepared using ArcGIS10.4. The LMT model, the Decision Tree model,
There are four types of kernel function in the SVM model including and the SVM model for the ground water potential mapping were
linear, polynomial, radial basis function (RBF), and sigmoid kernels. In programmed by the authors in the Matlab environment using Weka
fact, kernels provide a modular framework in support of vector ma- Application Programming Interface (API). In addition, a Python tool in
chines that can be adapted to different tasks such as pattern analysis or ArcGIS10.4 was developed to transfer the derived spring potential re-
recognition (Steinwart and Christmann, 2008). The classification ac- sult to raster maps.
curacy of SVM is related to selection of the proper kernel function
(Rahmati et al., 2017). The RBF kernel function was used in this study, 2.3.3. Evaluation of the models
because it has a good interpolation capability (Zhu et al., 2011). The The predictive performance was assessed using both threshold-in-
RBF kernel is described as follows; dependent and threshold-dependent performance measures. The re-
ceiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve, as a threshold-in-
K (x i , x j ) = exp(−γ ∥x i−x j ∥2 ) (22)
dependent method, was plotted for all the training and validation
It is noted that two parameters in the RBF kernel function such as datasets and subsequently goodness of fit and prediction efficacy of the
the regularization parameter (C) and kernel width (γ) play an important algorithms were investigated, respectively (Oh et al., 2011). Goodness

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Fig. 5. Groundwater potential maps produced by three sample data sets: (a-c) LMT, (d-f) C4.5 DT, and (g-i) SVM.

of fit shows the ability of the algorithm in estimating the training da- validation dataset. The plot shows the true positive rate (TPR) as a
taset, while prediction performance works with the validation dataset function of false positive rate (FPR) (Oh and Lee 2010; Nandi and
(Bui et al., 2012; Umar et al., 2014). In the ROC curve, a comparison Shakoor, 2010). In fact, the TPR depicts the proportion of spring pixels
takes place between the computed groundwater potential map with the that are correctly classified as spring occurrences; and the FPR reflects

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Table 4 RAUC − ROC = AUC −ROCmax−AUC −ROCmin (30)

Goodness-of-fit of models based on three sample data sets (S1–S3) and different
where, RE, RTSS, and RAUC-ROC are the robustness of a model based on
evaluation criteria in the training step.
efficiency, TSS, and AUC-ROC criteria, respectively. Emax, TSSmax, and
Evaluation criteria Data set Models AUC-ROCmax are the maximum accuracy values among all datasets. In
LMT C4.5 DT SVM
addition, minimum accuracy values are denoted as Emin, TSSmin, and
AUC-ROCmin among all three datasets. These analyses were performed
Efficiency S1 0.870 0.931 0.867 in both training and validation steps.
S2 0.947 0.938 0.927
S3 0.891 0.884 0.889
Mean 0.902 0.917 0.894 3. Results
TSS S1 0.761 0.876 0.737
S2 0.839 0.898 0.846 3.1. Application of the models to groundwater potential mapping
S3 0.790 0.832 0.808
Mean 0.796 0.868 0.797
AUC S1 0.917 0.944 0.923
Fig. 5a–i show groundwater spring potential maps produced by
S2 0.965 0.969 0.941 LMT, C4.5, and SVM for three different training sets. The mentioned
S3 0.940 0.945 0.928 maps were classified into four categories of low, moderate, high, and
Mean 0.941 0.952 0.930 very high using the quantile classification method. Areas classified as
high and very high GWP clearly matches with the sections of the wa-
tershed with high slope and close to faults. Areas along the river and
the proportion of the non-spring pixels that are incorrectly classified as
sections of the upstream part (headwater) are shown to have a pro-
springs (Corsini et al., 2009; Frattini et al., 2010). The TPR and FPR can
mising zone for groundwater.
be calculated based on a confusion matrix (also known as contingency
table) using Eqs. (24) and (25):
3.2. Evaluation of the groundwater potential maps
TP
TPR =
TP + FN (24) The results of the goodness-of-fit are shown in Table 4. In the case of
LMT results, performance values range from 0.870 to 0.947
FP
FPR = (mean = 0.902) based on E metric, from 0.761 to 0.839
FP + TN (25)
(mean = 0.796) based on TSS, 0.917 to 0.965 (mean = 0.941) based on
where, TP (true positive) and TN (true negative) are the number of AUC-ROC. According to C4.5 DT results, E, TSS, and AUC-ROC values
pixels that are correctly classified whereas FP (false positive) and FN were 0.884–0.938 (mean = 0.917), 0.832–0.898 (mean = 0.868),
(false negative) are the numbers of pixels erroneously classified. The 0.944–0.969 (mean = 0.952), respectively. Accuracy assessment of
area under curve (AUC-ROC) defines the efficiency of a model to ac- SVM results also indicated that E varies between 0.867 and 0.927
curately predict an occurrence or non-occurrence (Yesilnacar and (mean = 0.894), TSS ranges between 0.737 and 0.846 (mean = 0.797),
Topal, 2005; Naghibi and Dashtpagerdi, 2017). The AUC-ROC alters and AUC-ROC alters between 0.923 and 0.941 (mean = 0.930).
from 0.5 to 1; a higher value shows a stronger model, while a lower Therefore, it can be observed that all three models have the good-ex-
value of AUC-ROC determines a weaker model (Chen et al., 2017a; cellent performances. In fact, E, TSS, and AUC-ROC criteria indicated a
Hong et al., 2017). According to Fressard et al. (2014), AUC-ROC can be substantial agreement between the trained models and reality. How-
classified as the following five classes of accuracy: poor accuracy, for ever, as the training datasets were used to generate the models, they
AUC-ROC values from 0.6 to 0.7; fair accuracy, for AUC-ROC values could not be used to assess their prediction capability. The validation
from 0.7 to 0.8; good accuracy for AUC-ROC values from 0.8 to 0.9; and analysis shows how well the model can predict groundwater potential
excellent accuracy for AUC-ROC values from 0.9 to 1. in a given area.
In addition, two threshold-dependent evaluation metrics including In the validation step, the results of the applied models were verified
efficiency (E) and true skill statistic (TSS) (Allouche et al., 2006; using validation datasets and three different evaluation criteria
Fukuda et al., 2013) were considered to assess the efficiency of the (Table 5). According to the LMT results, E ranges between 0.847 and
models. These evaluation criteria can be calculated using following 0.874 (mean = 0.860), TSS varies between 0.682 and 0.763
equations: (mean = 0.718), AUC-ROC changes between 0.881 and 0.924
(mean = 0.904). In the case of the C4.5 DT model, E values alter from
TP + TN
E= 0.786 to 0.841 (mean = 0.818), TSS values range from 0.562 to 0.651
TP + TN + FP + FN (26)

TSS = TPR−FPR (27) Table 5

Predictive performance of models based on three sample data sets (S1–S3) and
The robustness of a model can be determined by analyzing the different evaluation criteria in the validation step.
changes of the model efficiency when small alterations in input data are
Evaluation criteria Data set Models
made (Frattini et al., 2010; Conoscenti et al., 2015; Angileri et al., 2016;
Cama et al., 2017; Pourghasemi et al., 2017). In the current study, three LMT C4.5 DT SVM
data sets were used for both training and validation steps. Models were
applied to the mentioned datasets, and then were verified using the Efficiency S1 0.874 0.786 0.799
S2 0.847 0.841 0.863
validation datasets. “The robustness of the predictive model is defined as S3 0.857 0.829 0.833
the stability of the model's results in terms of accuracy models when the Mean 0.860 0.818 0.831
training and validation samples are altered” (Rahmati et al., 2017). The TSS S1 0.763 0.562 0.690
robustness of the models was calculated by differentiating the max- S2 0.682 0.671 0.713
S3 0.709 0.651 0.701
imum and minimum accuracy values based on each evaluation criteria
Mean 0.718 0.628 0.701
(Conoscenti et al., 2014): AUC S1 0.924 0.864 0.883
S2 0.881 0.865 0.895
RE = Emax −Emin (28)
S3 0.907 0.875 0.891
Mean 0.904 0.868 0.889
RTSS = TSSmax −TSSmin (29)

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O. Rahmati et al. Journal of Hydrology 565 (2018) 248–261

section), the LMT indicated an excellent predictive skill (AUC-

ROC greater than 0.9), although the SVM and C4.5 DT models showed a
good accuracy (AUC-ROC = 0.8–0.9).

3.3. Robustness analysis

The findings of robustness based on three different evaluation cri-

teria are presented in Fig. 6(a–c). According to Fig. 6a, all three models
were found to be stable and robust in both training and validation steps
because there were only slight variations when changes of the training
and validation samples were performed. As it can be observed, the LMT
algorithm had minimum RE value (0.027) in the validation step in-
dicating the highest stability and robustness in comparison with other
models (0.055 and 0.064). Fig. 6b indicates that SVM’ s stability
(RTSS = 0.023) was slightly better than LMT (RTSS = 0.081) and C4.5
DT (RTSS = 0.109). As presented in Fig. 6c, results of the SVM with
minimum RAUC-ROC value of 0.012 (i.e., close AUC-ROC values in dif-
ferent replicates) indicate a high stability and robustness, while C4.5
DT (RAUC-ROC = 0.011) and LMT (RAUC-ROC = 0.043) showed a slight
asymmetry in their results. However, although all three models were
robust based on RE, RTSS, and RAUC-ROC indices, a slightly higher ro-
bustness of the LMT model may be expected when the RAUC-ROC index
used.

3.4. Contribution of the factors in the modelling process

The contribution of the groundwater conditioning factors was as-

sessed (Table 6) and the relative slope position was found to be the
most important factor in the modelling with the LMT and C4.5 DT
models while it had the secondary importance in the SVM. Overall, RSP
was chosen as the most important GCF followed by distance from faults
and lithology factors. It was followed by distance from faults and li-
thology. On the contrary, TRI, slope, and CI factors were least im-
portant factors identified by the modelling procedure.

4. Discussion

Machine learning and data-driven models have been gaining po-

pularity in the field of geospatial analysis and modeling, especially
groundwater spring potential modeling. In particularly, these ap-
proaches show promise when tackling the challenge of mapping
groundwater potential (or spring potential) zones for large regions,
which may not have sufficient geotechnical and hydrogeological data to
conduct physically-based and/or numerical models (Maliva and
Missimer, 2012; Nampak et al., 2014). However, on the one hand, new
proposed hybrid models should be applied and also their applicability
and capability must be investigated to find the best model which is

Table 6
Results of variable importance analysis of conditioning factors based three
Fig. 6. Robustness of the applied models in training and validation steps based models and three sample datasets.
on three evaluation criteria: a) efficiency, b) TSS, and c) AUC.
Factors Models

(mean = 0.628), and AUC-ROC values change from 0.864 to 0.875 LMT C4.5 DT SVM

(mean = 0.868). Regarding the SVM model, E, TSS, and AUC-ROC va- RSP 25.4 ± 0.3 20.2 ± 0.28 19.5 ± 0.25
lues range between 0.799 and 0.863 (mean = 0.831), 0.690–0.713 Distance from fault 23.8 ± 0.24 19.9 ± 0.3 22.1 ± 0.28
(mean = 0.701), and 0.883–0.895 (mean = 0.889), respectively. As Lithology 13.6 ± 0.21 16.4 ± 0.26 16.3 ± 0.25
can been seen, the LMT model exhibited the highest predictive per- Altitude 11.2 ± 0.25 12.1 ± 0.28 12.6 ± 0.16
Stream density 7 ± 0.15 6.2 ± 0.18 6.5 ± 0.2
formance based on all evaluation criteria (E = 0.860, TSS = 0.718,
Distance from stream 6.8 ± 0.3 5.4 ± 0.37 6.3 ± 0.25
AUC-ROC = 0.904), followed by SVM (E = 0.831, TSS = 0.701, AUC- TWI 3 ± 0.25 3.9 ± 0.2 3.2 ± 0.15
ROC = 0.889), and C4.5 DT model (E = 0.818, TSS = 0.628, AUC- TPI 3.8 ± 0.22 6.8 ± 0.25 3.3 ± 0.32
ROC = 0.868). In other words, the validation of the results demon- Aspect 1.1 ± 0.15 3.1 ± 0.21 2.8 ± 0.3
CI 2.5 ± 0.3 2.2 ± 0.27 3.4 ± 0.24
strated a strong agreement between the distribution of the existing
Slope 1.6 ± 0.28 3.3 ± 0.3 3.1 ± 0.35
spring (validation dataset) and the predictive maps of the LMT model. TRI 0.2 ± 0.15 0.5 ± 0.2 0.9 ± 0.3
According to the accuracy classification (described in the methodology

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O. Rahmati et al.
more accurate, robust and less sensitive to noisy input data, and also
should maximise information output from the least amount of input
data. On the other hand, there are different sources of uncertainty in
spatial prediction of groundwater spring potential including those re-
lated to input variables, sampling strategy, and modelling procedure
(Refsgaard et al., 2007). According to Garosi et al. (2018), among those
sources, random classification of datasets for training and validation
purposes can be an important cause of uncertainty in spatial modelling
of groundwater spring potential. From the validation result, it is clear
that all the models provided good to excellent performance in pre-
dicting the probability of spring occurrence and based on three
threshold-dependent and –independent evaluation criteria. Im-
portantly, the findings demonstrate that LMT model has the highest
efficiency, TSS, and AUC-ROC values for all validation dataset, al-
though it sometimes indicated a slightly lower robustness (but accep-
table) in comparison with other models. The results reflected that the
SVM and C4.5 DT also have good performances for both training and
the validation datasets even when based on different evaluation cri-
teria. The most interesting finding was that LMT was identified as the
best model in terms of both accuracy and robustness for groundwater
spring potential modelling.
This finding is consistent with those of Landwehr et al. (2005) and
Colkesen and Kavzoglu (2017) who stated that the LMT uses classifi-
cation and regression tree for pruning in order to decrease the impact of
overfitting. LMT employs the LogitBoost algorithm for building the
logistic regression functions at the nodes of a tree and uses the well-
known CART algorithm for pruning and Shoombuatong et al. (2012)
proposed this characteristic as a main reason for its capability in the
modeling process. However, as explained in the results section, LMT
was sometimes slightly sensitive to random changes in the input data
but nevertheless within an acceptable range. Therefore, even if we
demonstrate that the LMT hybrid model generates more accurate pre-
dictions; it is still important to identify the main sources of variations
that affect its robustness.
Furthermore, good performance of the C4.5 DT and SVM models in
groundwater spring potential mapping was successfully demonstrated.
According to Steinwart and Christmann (2008), Ballabio and
Sterlacchini (2012); and Min and Lee (2005), the SVM model is capable
of analysing datasets which are complicated, have nonlinear relation-
ships, and can handle noise in datasets. In the case of C4.5 DT model, its
performance has been effectively assessed in other fields of geospatial
modeling such as landslide susceptibility and is consistent with the
findings of this research (Yeon et al., 2010). This confirms previous
studies (Tiwari and Chatterjee, 2010; Tehrany et al., 2013, 2014;
Dehnavi et al., 2015; Bui et al., 2015, 2017b) which showed that hybrid
models result in better accuracy than single models. The results of the
current study also demonstrated that the LMT model produced reliable
results in terms of accuracy and robustness.
Application of the RSP is new in the field of groundwater potential
modelling and it was proved to be an important conditioning factor in
the modelling process. The RSP has also been identified as an important
factor in other fields of study such as soil moisture modelling
(Lookingbill and Urban, 2004), and landscape modelling (MacMillan
et al., 2000; Schwarz et al., 2003; Taverna et al., 2005). This study
demonstrated that the RSP factor was the most important factor based
on three different machine learning models including LMT, C4.5 DT,
and SVM. After RSP factor, distance from faults, lithology, and altitude
were the most influential factors on groundwater spring occurrence. A
variety of GCFs are reported as important conditioning factors in
groundwater spring modelling, but so far there are no universal and
comprehensive guidelines in selecting independent variables among
geo-environmental factors. For instance, Rahmati et al. (2016) stated
that altitude, drainage density, and lithology are the most important
factors. Naghibi et al. (2017c) mentioned that NDVI, altitude, and slope
angle were reported as the most important conditioning factors. Sander
(2007) reviewed the importance of lineaments and faults in
259
Journal of Hydrology 565 (2018) 248–261
groundwater exploration. This variability of the importance of the
factors could be associated with the differences between the geological,
climate, and topographical features of the study areas. Hence, we be-
lieve that our results reinforce the literature in recognizing the influ-
ential factors on groundwater spring potential because our analyses
were conducted using different machine learning algorithms. also It is
recommended that future research deals with the main sources of un-
certainty which might be useful to increase model accuracy.
5. Conclusion
This study was carried out in order to not only investigate the
capability a hybrid model, LMT, to predict the groundwater spring
potential for the first time, but also compare its capability and robust-
ness with two state-of-the-art models including C4.5 DT and SVM. In
addition, some new morphometric factors such as TRI, RSP, and CI were
applied and the importance of all GCFs was investigated based on all
modeling approaches. Our study demonstrates that there was generally
some differentiation in prediction performance and between stability
and robustness hybrid of individual machine learning algorithms. The
results underlined that even when conducting model comparisons with
some clear objectives, such as prediction performance and robustness,
understanding the strengths and limitations remains somewhat difficult
for model selection. According to the achievements, LMT obtained the
most outstanding performance based on three threshold-dependent and
–independent evaluation criteria, although it sometimes showed a
slight sensitivity to changes in the calibration/validation data. In terms
of pure prediction performance, the C4.5 DT and SVM had a slightly
lower accuracy when compared to the LMT. In addition, the result of
variable importance indicated that the RSP was the most important GCF
followed by distance from faults and lithology factors. On the other
contrary, TRI, slope, and CI factors were the least important factors in
the modelling procedure. Furthermore, the findings of this work could
be useful for water resources managers in order to deal with the existing
uncertain situation and understand different aspects, which influence
groundwater potential with more accuracy. Additionally, as a sugges-
tion for future research, this methodology could be used to analyse
vulnerability of spring flows to climate change, i.e as a regional water
resource analysis tool. In order to increase accuracy and diminish the
uncertainties in the models, hybrid modelling can be suggested which
reduces some problems in classification models such as over fitting.
Acknowledgements
The work was financially supported by the Iran National Science
Foundation (INSF) (Code No. 93034760). We thank the Iranian
Department of Water Resources Management and Iranian Department
of Geology for providing data and maps. We highly appreciate four
anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions that helped us
to improve the paper. The authors also would like to thank Prof. Jeffrey
Vaughan Turner (CSIRO, Australia) for English proof reading and
constructive comments.
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