Groundwater availability in the Zakho Basin faces significant challenges due to political issues, border stream control, climate change, urbanization, land use changes, and poor administration, leading to declining groundwater quantity and quality. To address these issues, this study utilized the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and geospatial techniques to identify potential groundwater sites in Zakho. The study assigned weights normalized through the AHP eigenvector and created a final index using the weighted overlay method and specific criteria such as slope, flow accumulation, drainage density, lineament density, geology, well data, rainfall, and soil type. Validation through the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC = 0.849) and coefficient of determination (R2 = 0.81) demonstrated the model’s accuracy. The results showed that 17% of the area had the highest potential as a reliable groundwater source, 46% represented high-to-moderate potential zones, and 37% had low potential. Flat areas between rivers and high mountains displayed the greatest potential for groundwater development. Identifying these potential sites can aid farmers, regional planners, and local governments in making precise decisions about installing hand pumps and tube wells for a regular water supply. Additionally, the findings contribute to the development of a sustainable groundwater management plan, focusing on improving water usage and protecting water-related ecosystems in the region. Identification of the optimum influencing factors, arrangement of the factors in a hierarchy, and creation of a GWPI map will allow further planning for groundwater preservation and sustainability. This project can be conducted in other areas facing droughts.

Scientific and academic researches and studies trying to present a multi-range of techniques and methods focusing on groundwater pollution, potentials, assessment, and prediction, Groundwater is the most important resource of fresh water now and many researchers trying to cover all about this resource to get sustainable development. This review aims to create an overview of groundwater analysis and forecasting methods. The study is based on the need to select and group research papers into best-defined methodological categories. The article gives an overview of recent advancements in groundwater potential zone analysis approaches, as well as ongoing research objectives based on that overview. This review has overviewed papers and researches been published last decade 2010 -2020 have been done depending on the data sources from the global online database, which could obtain many papers and research studying the groundwater potential zones and other aspects related to groundwater. The aim of reviewing multiple types of research and papers on determining groundwater potential zones by applying the best techniques and selecting the most suitable factors that affect groundwater potential zones.