The concept of resilience seems applicable for sustainable groundwater management. The resilience is broadly defined as the ability of a system to resist changes by external forces (EFs), and has been used for disaster management and climate change adaptation, including the groundwater resilience to climate change in countries where groundwater is a major water resource, whereas not yet in the geological society of South Korea. The resilience is qualitatively assessed using the absorptive, adaptive, and restorative capacity representing the internal robustness, self-organization, and external recovery resources, respectively, while quantitatively using the system impact (SI) and recovery effort (RE). When the groundwater is considered a complicated system where physicochemical, biological, and geological components interact, the groundwater resilience can be defined as the ability of groundwater to maintain the targeted quality and quantity at any EFs. For the quantitative assessment, however, the resilience should be specified to an EF and measurable parameters should be available for SI and RE. This study focused on groundwater resilience to two EFs in urban areas, i.e., pollution due to land use change and groundwater withdrawal for underground structures. The resilience to each EF was assessed using qualitative components, while measurements for SI and RE were discussed.

Keywords: Groundwater, Resilience, External forces, System impact, Recovery effort