Improved Flower Pollination Algorithm for Optimal Groundwater Management

Abstract

Groundwater management problems are typically of a large-scale nature, involving complex nonlinear objective functions and constraints, which are commonly evaluated through the use of numerical simulation models. Given these complexities, metaheuristic optimization algorithms have recently become popular choice for solving such complex problems which are difficult to solve by traditional methods. However, the practical applications of metaheuristics are severely challenged by the requirement of large number of function evaluations to achieve convergence. To overcome this shortcoming, many new metaheuristics and different variants of existing ones have been proposed in recent years. In this study, a recently developed algorithm called flower pollination algorithm (FPA) is investigated for optimal groundwater management. The FPA is improved, combined with the widely used groundwater flow simulation model MODFLOW, and applied to solve two groundwater management problems. The proposed algorithm, denoted as IFPA, is first tested on a hypothetical aquifer system, to minimize the total pumping to contain contaminated groundwater within a capture zone. IFPA is then applied to maximize the total annual pumping from existing wells in Rhis-Nekor unconfined coastal aquifer on the northern of Morocco. The obtained results indicate that IFPA is a promising method for solving groundwater management problems as it outperforms the standard FPA and other algorithms applied to the case studies considered, both in terms of convergence rate and solution quality.