Groundwater pollution mathematical modelling : Improvement or stagnation ?

Abstract

Publisher Summary The modeling of groundwater pollution consists in describing the convection of a contaminant, the dispersion of the contaminant, the chemical and physicochemical reactions of the contaminant with the solid matrix of the porous medium, the biochemical reactions of the contaminant with its environment, the reactions within the contaminant, by means of mathematical tools, such as systems of partial differential equations or probabilistic processes, used in well-chosen functional or probabilistic spaces representing the porous medium. While describing the phenomena is certainly interesting as it allows a better understanding of their fundamentals especially when the mathematical model is coupled with a physical model in the laboratory, the modeling of groundwater pollution is mainly aimed at providing a descriptive and predictive management tool, practical for field problems, whose type and resulting accuracy depends on the considered management objectives and, of course, the socio-economical constraints of the study. Three types of models are discussed in this chapter: black box models, grey box models, and complete structural models.