Abstract

Since more than a century ago, underground coal mines have been exploited in Spain. Today, after their natural flooding, some of them are studied as a possible water resource or for geothermal purposes. In that regard, the Geographic Information Systems technology is being used as a workhorse for integration, data processing and display. As data collected are usually dispersed, scarce and uncertain, the GIS allows to extract the most of their combination. In this case, the ultimate goal is to better understand the behavior of water flows involved. To help achieve this objective, we used the ArcGIS together with groundwater flow numerical simulator FEFLOW. In this article, the GIS tools contribution to convert mining and hydrogeological data into useful information for a groundwater numerical model is shown. Those operations relevant to the conceptual model are discussed. Also those feeding the numerical model or the post-processing phase. Advantages and disadvantages of the employed GIS tools are discussed together with their links with FEFLOW. Finally, common problems present in mining data are discussed as also are the limitations of the GIS regarding them.