Reliability evaluation of groundwater contamination source characterization under uncertain flow field

Groundwater contamination is one of the serious environmental problems. Effective remediation strategies require accurate characteristics of contamination sources. Contamination source identification approaches need accurate flow and contaminant transport simulation models. In order to obtain reliable solutions, the simulation models need to be provided with reliable hydrogeologic information. In real life scenarios usually sparse and limited hydrogeologic information is available. In this study two hydraulic conductivity sampling networks are ranked based on their effectiveness in identifying reliable contamination source characteristics. Using multiple realizations of hydraulic conductivity fields, and the location and size of the contaminant plume at different monitoring stages, an index of reliability is estimated for each hydraulic conductivity sampling network. It is demonstrated that the source characteristics identified by utilizing the sampling network with higher index of reliability results in more accurate characterization of contamination sources. Therefore the developed methodology provides a tool to select an appropriate hydrogeologic sampling network for more efficient characterizing of contamination sources