Literature Review Instructions

Research aims and objectives

In this section you need to clearly state the question you seek to answer or problem you wish to solve, the aims of the research, and the objectives that have been set in order to satisfy those aims.

The research question is the question that your research project sets out to answer. This is NOT the same as your survey or interview questions. Research questions must be clear, focused, and appropriately complex.

The research aims are expressed as two or three statements of what your research sets out to achieve. These ‘Aims’ typically point out in broad terms what you intend to do and what you hope to accomplish for long-term benefit. Aims are not usually numbered.

The research objectives are a more detailed breakdown of the research aims, providing more focus on how you plan to fulfil your aims, i.e. are for short-term effect. The point of having this additional layer of detail is that this will help you determine which research methods will be appropriate for the study. Each objective must be clearly subordinate to one of the aims listed above. Objectives are always numbered.

Below is an example to demonstrate a typical layout. You can see that it starts with a plain question in ordinary English, then broadens the question out to identify ‘what’ you are going to, and lastly, defines ‘how you are going to do it.

This research is proposed to answer the following question:

What are the common causes of project abandonment in XYZ industry, and what can management do to reduce the likelihood of project abandonment?

This research aims to:

• Identify and analyse common causes of project abandonment in XYZ industry; and
• Generate a set of management guidelines to reduce the likelihood of project abandonment.

The objectives of this research are to:

• Identify and critically evaluate common causes of project abandonment in XYZ industry as reported in the literature;
• Investigate and analyse common causes of project abandonment as experienced in XYZ industry practice;
• Synthesise the evaluated literature and analysed practices to identify correlations and contradictions; and
• Generate a set of management guidelines to reduce the likelihood of project abandonment.

Solution Literature Review Sample

1. Review of literature

In order to conduct a research study on the use of GIS and remote sensing for identification of groundwater potential zones, having a knowledge about the recently performed research works in this filed is required. It provides a preview of these methods and techniques that other researchers have used to identify groundwater zones. It also helps to understand the difficulties and possible faults of using these techniques and makes the new researchers think to mitigate the problems for a new research work. This section provides a preliminary literature review on the use of GIS and RS for identification of groundwater recharge potential zones.

Generally, the groundwater is used for the cases when the natural water resources are not sufficient. Conventional methods in identifying a groundwater indicator have their own difficulties which requires a high cost. Remote sensing (RS) is a very useful approach for defining groundwater indicators. The obtained data using this approach has a multi temporal and extensive synoptic coverage ability (Khodaei & Nassery, 2013).

The fact is that remote sensing data helps with a qualitative assessment of the groundwater resources by extracting some important parameters such as geological structures, surface morphology and the hydrologic properties of a specific area. In addition, it can offer a better examination and a systematic analysis of different geomorphic units, land and lineament features which signifies the subsurface water conditions (Das et al., 1997).

Geographic Information System (GIS) technique can be combined with the RS method to build a complete approach for delineation of the groundwater resources. This technology offers suitable alternatives for effective management of large and complex databases. It can be used to process and analyze data to specify potential areas of groundwater resources. Information and data which are sent from satellites is becoming important for environmental studies in the recent decades. An important part of this information is about water and water resources which is a crucial element for human life on the earth (Muthukrishnan et al., 2013).

Patil and Mohite (2014) claimed that by combination of remote sensing data and GIS techniques, an appropriate platform for a better analysis of different datasets can be obtained. This integrated approach can also help with making more efficient decisions not only for preparing the thematic maps of the potential groundwater zones, but also for its effective exploitation for a region.

Extracting the groundwater resources requires different operations such as delineation and mapping, structural and geomorphological units. The remote sensing which is based on the satellite data has made some processes easier than the past. The preparation of different maps such as lithological, structural and geomorphological maps is facilitated using the data which is sent from satellite. These data provide a clear view of the area under study including structural or natural features such as rocks, folds, lineaments, fractures and different landforms. In addition, these data can help to estimate the level of zones for the potential groundwater which are categorized as poor, moderate, good and very good potential zones.

Abdalla (2012) investigated some of the main parameters which show a groundwater potential in a region including ground slope, stream networks, lineaments, lithology and topography. He used GIS and RS techniques to prepare the thematic map of each parameter. Using the Raster calculate module of GIS, the input layers were combined together to generate perspective zones for the potential groundwater for the area under investigation. The results indicated different zones for the potential groundwater, very good with 12.79%, good with 26.95%, moderate with 33.05% and low with 27.21%. It was concluded that the application of GIS and RS methods is a useful help for groundwater development and detection.

Remote sensing and GIS methods are now commonly used in the countries which are experiencing low rainfalls or seasonal droughts. Senanayake et al., (2016) used the GIS and RS techniques on order to find potential artificial recharge sites in a region of Sri Lanka. They used the weighted linear combination method to integrate the effective thematic layers such as the amount of rainfall, lineament, ground slope, drainage, land cover, lithology, geomorphology and soil properties. Based on the obtained results, they found a high to moderate groundwater recharge potential in around 49% of the investigated area.

Selvam et al. (2016) adopted an integrated approach using GIS and RS techniques to delineate potential groundwater zones in India. They prepared different thematic layers of geology, soil, land use, slope, lineament and drainage using the satellite imageries and survey toposheets. After that, they transformed thematic layers to raster data using the converter tool in ArcGIS software. With the help of aerial photos, geology maps, land use database and field verification, the weights of influential factors on the groundwater recharge were obtained. They could detect 19% of the investigated area with highest recharge potential which was limited to the pediplain or agriculture land use and 28% of the area with moderate recharge potential groundwater.

Agarwal and Garg (2016) performed an investigation to delineate groundwater potential and recharge zone maps using RS and GIS in Uttar Pradesh, India. They used Analytical Hierarchical process (AHP) as a multi criteria decision making technique to normalize the weights of thematic layers and their classes for predicting the groundwater potential zone maps. To produce these maps, thematic layers were integrated using weighted overlay in a GIS environment. They classified the output maps into different zones and found that the area with excellent zone was about 7% of the total area of investigation. Whereas the area falling in very poor zone was about 17.4%.

Yeh et al. (2016) performed a research study to analyze the fundamental characteristics and recharge of the groundwater for Hualian Rive in Taiwan. They investigated five affecting parameters including lithology, land cover/land use, lineaments, drainage and slope for this analysis using GIS approach. They concluded that about 1.2% of the study area is designated as excellent potential groundwater recharge while good, moderate and lower potential groundwater recharge areas cover 11.6, 11.7 and 29.9%, respectively.

With respect to the above mentioned works, it is proved that the remote sensing and GIS are very helpful methods in identification of groundwater potential zones. These techniques lead to save time, manpower and cost and provide an opportunity to widen the area of study. This research study aims to utilize these techniques in finding the groundwater recharge potential zones.

2. Research aims and objectives

Investigation of Groundwater Recharge Potential Zones Using GIS And Remote Sensing

Aims and Objectives

Groundwater resource is vital for human survival. Therefore, there is a need to identify the potential zones of groundwater. Over the years, there has been an increase in demand for groundwater and therefore there is a need to establish whether the available techniques can achieve desired results and how Geographic Information System (GIS) and the Remote Sensing techniques can be applied in the  investigation of groundwater recharge potential zones.

Objectives

This research aims to:

• Analyse the use of the GIS and Remote Sensing in identifying the presence of groundwater
• The study assesses the usefulness of the use of GIS and Remote Sensing while investigating the groundwater recharge potential zones.

The objectives include

1. Identify and critically assess the effectiveness of the use of both Remote Sensing and the Geographic Information System (GIS) technique identifying the Groundwater Recharge Potential Zones
2. Evaluate the literature relating to the Groundwater Recharge Potential Zones and how both Remote Sensing and the Geographic Information System (GIS) technique has been applied in the past
3. To establish the capacity of the Geographic Information System (GIS) and the Remote Sensing in mapping the Groundwater Recharge Potential Zones
4. Examine the Groundwater Recharge Potential Zones by relying on different thematic maps relating to lineament as well as drainage density, geomorphology, slope, geology, and the soil composition

References

Abdalla, Fathy. (2012). Mapping of groundwater prospective zones using remote sensing and GIS techniques: A case study from the Central Eastern Desert, Egypt. Journal of African Earth Sciences, 70, 8-17.

Agarwal, Rajat, & Garg, PK. (2016). Remote sensing and GIS based groundwater potential & recharge zones mapping using multi-criteria decision making technique. Water resources management, 30(1), 243-260.

Das, S, Behera, SC, Kar, A, Narendra, P, & Guha, S. (1997). Hydrogeomorphological mapping in ground water exploration using remotely sensed data—a case study in keonjhar district, orissa. Journal of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing, 25(4), 247-259.

Khodaei, Kamal, & Nassery, Hamid Reza. (2013). Groundwater exploration using remote sensing and geographic information systems in a semi-arid area (Southwest of Urmieh, Northwest of Iran). Arabian Journal of Geosciences, 6(4), 1229-1240.

Muthukrishnan, A, Bhuvaneswaran, C, Panneerselvam, A, & Alaguraja, P. (2013). Role of remote sensing and GIS in artificial recharge of the ground water aquifer in the Shanmuganadi sub watershed in the Cauvery River Basin, Trichirapalli District, Tamil Nadu. International Journal of Applied Science and Engineering Research, 2(3), 181-192.

Patil, Shivaji Govind, & Mohite, Nitin Mahadeo. (2014). Identification of groundwater recharge potential zones for a watershed using remote sensing and GIS. International journal of Geomatics and geosciences, 4(3), 485.

Selvam, S, Dar, Farooq A, Magesh, NS, Singaraja, C, Venkatramanan, S, & Chung, SY. (2016). Application of remote sensing and GIS for delineating groundwater recharge potential zones of Kovilpatti Municipality, Tamil Nadu using IF technique. Earth Science Informatics, 9(2), 137-150.

Senanayake, IP, Dissanayake, DMDOK, Mayadunna, BB, & Weerasekera, WL. (2016). An approach to delineate groundwater recharge potential sites in Ambalantota, Sri Lanka using GIS techniques. Geoscience Frontiers, 7(1), 115-124.

Yeh, Hsin-Fu, Cheng, Youg-Sin, Lin, Hung-I, & Lee, Cheng-Haw. (2016). Mapping groundwater recharge potential zone using a GIS approach in Hualian River, Taiwan. Sustainable Environment Research, 26(1), 33-43.