Evolutionary Modeling of Response of Water Table to Precipitations

The analysis of the dynamic response of aquifers to rainfall is a key issue for groundwater resource management. A data-driven evolutionary modeling approach, Evolutionary Polynomial Regression, based on multiobjective optimization is used here, in order to identify explicit equations, which forecast groundwater piezometric levels as a function of past rainfall values and past measured values of groundwater table levels. This methodology is applied here to two aquifers located in the same climatic area of South-East Italy, representative of two completely different hydrogeological scenarios: a deep coastal karst aquifer and a shallow porous aquifer. EPRMOGA returns highly reliable models, which allow for describing the different hydrogeological behaviors of the two aquifers. These models can be used both for planning the management of groundwater resources and for obtaining new scientific insight about the aquifers, looking at the equations and at the variables identified by EPRMOGA.