UNCERT: geostatistics, uncertainty analysis and visualization software applied to groundwater flow and contaminant transport modeling

Abstract

UNCERT is a 2D and 3D geostatistics, uncertainty analysis and visualization software package applied to ground water flow and contaminant transport modeling. It is a collection of modules that provides tools for linear regression, univariate statistics, semivariogram analysis, inverse-distance gridding, trend-surface analysis, simple and ordinary kriging and discrete conditional indicator simulation. Graphical user interfaces for MODFLOW and MT3D, ground water flow and contaminant transport models, are provided for streamlined data input and result analysis. Visualization tools are included for displaying data input and output. These include, but are not limited to, 2D and 3D scatter plots, histograms, box and whisker plots, 2D contour maps, surface renderings of 2D gridded data and 3D views of gridded data. By design, UNCERT's graphical user interface and visualization tools facilitate model design and analysis. There are few built in restrictions on data set sizes and each module (with two exceptions) can be run in either graphical or batch mode. UNCERT is in the public domain and is available from the World Wide Web with complete on-line and printable (PDF) documentation. UNCERT is written in ANSI-C with a small amount of FORTRAN77, for UNIX workstations running X-Windows and Motif (or Lesstif). This article discusses the features of each module and demonstrates how they can be used individually and in combination. The tools are applicable to a wide range of fields and are currently used by researchers in the ground water, mining, mathematics, chemistry and geophysics, to name a few disciplines.