Author(s)

Bithin Datta¹, Om Prakash¹, Pauline Cassou², Mathieu Valetaud²

¹Discipline of Civil and Environmental Engineering, School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, James Cook University, Townsville QLD 4811, AUSTRALIA & CRC for Contamination Assessment and Remediation of the Environment, Mawson Lakes SA 5095, Australia.
²école Nationale Supérieure d’Ingénieurs de Limoges (ENSIL), Université de Limoges, 87068, Limoges, France.

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.

Groundwater Contamination, Source Characterization, Linked Simulation-Optimization

Datta, B. , Prakash, O. , Cassou, P. and Valetaud, M. (2014) 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. doi: 10.4236/gep.2014.25007.