Using Expert Participation to Evaluate the Accuracy of Hand-Drawn Water-Table Maps.

ABSTRACT: Water-table maps are fundamental to hydrogeological studies and a manual, hand-drawn method is still commonly used to produce them. Despite this, the accuracy and variability of such maps have received little attention in international literature. In a unique experiment, 63 groundwater professionals drew water-table equipotential contours based on the same dataset of point measurements and were asked to infer flow directions and predict groundwater elevations at predefined locations. The root mean squared error (RMSE) for the average map calibration data was 10.5 m, which is accuracy comparable to numerical groundwater models. This study confirmed that to produce hand-drawn water-table maps, practitioners seek to not only fit the spatial data, but also to conform to their own cognitive mod

SUBMITTER: Marshall SK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11697533 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan-Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature