Applications of Diverse Data Combinations in Subsurface Characterization using D-optimality Based Pilot Point Methods (DBM)

Abstract

Many cases of strategically designed groundwater remediation have lack of information of hydraulic conductivity or permeability, which can render remediation methods inefficient. Many studies have been carried out to minimize this shortcoming by determining detailed hydraulic information either through direct or indirect measurements. One popular method for hydraulic characterization is the pilot point method (PPM), where the hydraulic property is estimated at a small number of strategically selected points using secondary measurements such as hydraulic head or tracer concentration. This paper adopted a D-optimality based pilot point method (DBM) developed previously for hydraulic head measurements and extended it to include both hydraulic head and tracer measurements. Based on different combinations of trials, our analysis showed that DBM performs well when hydraulic head is used for pilot point selection and both hydraulic head and tracer measurements are used for determining the conductivity values.