Abstract
Precise identification of the pollutant source characteristics is the first step for designing an effective groundwater contamination remediation strategy. In this study a linked simulation-optimization based methodology is utilized for identification of unknown groundwater pollution sources in a real life contaminated aquifer in New South Wales, Australia where the source locations and source flux release history are the explicit unknown variables. The methodology is applied utilizing an in house software package GWSID developed at James Cook University for optimal determination of the unknown source characteristics. The methodology incorporates linked simulation optimization approach and utilizes simulated Algorithm as an evolutionary optimization algorithm. The performance evaluation results show practical utility of the methodology and of the associated developed computers software in identifying the unknown source characteristics.
Highlights
Designing an effective remediation strategy for reclaiming a polluted aquifer requires precise information of the source characteristics in terms of magnitude, location, activity initiation time and activity duration
The source flux magnitude in gram per second is shown on the y axis
The exact source location, source activity initiation time and the source activity duration is indirectly estimated based on the estimated source flux values
Summary
Designing an effective remediation strategy for reclaiming a polluted aquifer requires precise information of the source characteristics in terms of magnitude, location, activity initiation time and activity duration. At the time of first detection of pollutants in a groundwater aquifer, very little is known about these pollution source characteristics. The identification of unknown pollution sources is non-linear (Mahar & Datta, 2000), ill-posed inverse problem (Yeh, 1986) and often have non unique solutions. How to cite this paper: Datta, B., Prakash, O., Cassou, P., & Valetaud, M. Optimal Unknown Pollution Source Characterization in a Contaminated Groundwater Aquifer—Evaluation of a Developed Dedicated Software Tool. Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection, 2, 41-51.
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