GROUNDWATER VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT USING DRASTIC AND GIS IN DEVEH AQUIFER, SYRIA. Rasha Hassan † Faculty of Sea and Environmental Sciences University of Cadiz Puerto Real Campus, Cadiz, Spain rasha.ibh@gmail.com Badr El Mahrad 1,2,3 1 (LG2E-CERNE2D), Department of Earth Sciences, Faculty of Sciences, Mohammed V University of Rabat, Morocco. 2 Murray Foundation, Liverpool, UK 3 CIMA, FCT,University of Algarve,Portugal badr.elmahrad@gmail.com Samia Chiban Department of Environmental Systems Engineering, The Higher Institute of Environmental Research Latakia, Syria samia982@yahoo.com ABSTRACT Groundwater is the main source for drinking water worldwide, thus, its contamination is a major concern. Deveh aquifer is a great example of that. Its water serves to more than 10000 people for drinking, agriculture and other purposes. The aquifer covers an area of 170 km2. However, it was heavily contaminated in 2006 and went out of service for more than few months. The aim of this research is to assess the vulnerability of this aquifer using the DRASTIC Method in order to explain this contamination event and to start a groundwater management plan. The vulnerability assessment map showed that (48%) of the studied area are highly vulnerable groundwater, with a DRASTIC index of (106) and covers 82km2. (23%) of total area have moderate vulnerability, with DRASTIC indices (94), (96) and covers 40 km2. The recharging area of Deveh aquifer has a high and moderate vulnerability to contamination which is considered as the main source of pollution. Furthermore, there is a hydrogeological link between Earth's surface and the aquifer, thus, create the answer to the contamination incident. KEYWORDS Groundwater, Contamination; Vulnerability Assessment, DRASTIC, GIS, Water Management, Syria. ACM Reference format: Rasha Hassan, Badr El Mahrad, Samia Chiban.2020. Groundwater Vulnerability Assessment Using DRASTIC and GIS In Deveh Aquifer, Syria. In Proceedings of International conference Geo-IT and Water Resources 2020 (GEOIT4W-2020). 7 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3399205.3399235 1 INTRODUCTION Groundwater is the main source for drinking water in many parts of the world due to its characteristics such as good quality and low susceptibility to pollution [ 6, 7].This integral resource is pressured by many factors that come mainly from anthropogenic activities [5, 12]. The Groundwater instability is an ability for pollutants to enter a given point in the groundwater system following entry at any place above the uppermost aquifer [14]. Many methods are used to assess the groundwater vulnerability such as DRASTIC approach that was proposed by [1]. This method is prevalent and used worldwide in the assessment of groundwater vulnerability due to many reasons [4, 8, 11, 13] The method inputs are either easily accessible or available in different agencies as they are only physical parameters, thus, are easy to measure [9]. However, it doesn't consider the chemical aspect of contaminants movement through the geological layers which is considered as a weakness for this method. DRASTIC can be used for a large area with geological complexity, and it is not site-specific. Furthermore, the DRASTIC final product is a simple vulnerability map that is considered explicit to managers and decision-makers. The purpose of this paper is to assess the Deveh Aquifer vulnerability using DRASTIC. The importance of studying this aquifer comes from two aspects. Firstly, it is a drinking water source for more than 10000 people. Secondly, this aquifer plays a great role in supplying the surface water of the coast, so, it is vital to keep its water clean. Moreover, the approach is used in simplified way as an introduction of further studies. 2 STUDY AREA The Deveh aquifer is located south-east of Latakia city in Latakia Governorate (Fig.1). It covers an area of 170 km 2 which resembles the first protection buffer for the aquifer. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the owner/author(s). GEOIT4W-2020, March 11–12, 2020, Al-Hoceima, Morocco © 2020 Association for Computing Machinery. ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-7578-8/20/03…$15.00 https://doi.org/10.1145/3399205.3399235