Coupled groundwater hydrodynamic and pollution transport modelling using Cellular Automata approach

Abstract

High urbanization puts many groundwater resources at risk of quality deterioration. Analyzing all viable potential groundwater contamination scenarios for good decision making requires reliable tool. Coupling several complex models in integrated modelling can often fail to perform in reasonable time. Possible solution in that case could be usage of simplified models in order to speed up long-term continuous calculations and simulations. The paper presents the application of the Cellular Automata (CA) approach in modelling of the contaminant transport under unsteady groundwater conditions. It compares the results obtained using coupled CA models with well-known analytical solutions and standard methods used for pollution transport modelling in groundwater conditions, such as coupled MODFLOW and MT3DMS. Results obtained in this paper show that CA approach can be satisfactorily used for simulations of unsteady groundwater conditions, caused by surface-groundwater interaction, and pollution transport, especially in diffusion dominant cases, gaining the reduction of simulation time up to 10 times.