JAL MITRA: A Mobile Application for Real-Time Groundwater Monitoring and Resource Assessment Using DWLR Data

Abstract

Groundwater constitutes a major component of India's water supply and is extensively used for domestic, agricultural, and industrial purposes. Effective management of this resource requires frequent observations of groundwater-level variations and timely interpretation of monitoring data. Conventional monitoring practices based on periodic measurements may not adequately represent short-term fluctuations caused by pumping, rainfall, and recharge events.

This paper presents the design of a mobile-based groundwater monitoring and resource assessment system that utilizes observations obtained from Digital Water Level Recorders (DWLRs). The proposed system is intended to provide a unified interface for accessing groundwater-level observations, examining temporal variations, estimating recharge using the Water Table Fluctuation (WTF) approach, and identifying locations experiencing groundwater stress. The proposed architecture consists of DWLR devices, a communication layer, a cloud-based data repository, an application server, and a mobile client. Data preprocessing procedures such as outlier identification, missing-value treatment, and standardization are incorporated before analytical processing. The application further provides geospatial visualization, time-series analysis, recharge information, alerts, and downloadable reports. The proposed framework demonstrates how frequently collected DWLR observations can be transformed into accessible information for groundwater researchers, planners, and other stakeholders.