Groundwater Characterization

This book addresses the theoretical background necessary to accomplish planning and management of groundwater systems, and presents up-to-date applications of the decision-aid techniques in this field. Groundwater systems play an essential role in meeting the ever-increasing demand for water for various purposes. Proper design and management of such systems should therefore be a very important matter of concern, not only to ensure that water will be available in adequate quantity (and quality) to satisfy demands, but also to guarantee that this would be done in an optimal manner from a IWRM perspective. There are many different decisions to be taken: where to locate wells, how much water is to be pumped, remedial strategies to be adopted, water supply structures (especially pumping equipment and pipe networks) to be installed, monitoring networks to be defined, etc.. These decisions must take many constraints into account,including drawdown limitations, flow gradients,and quality standards. Given the uncertainty characterizing the groundwater flow and transport, risk issues have to be considered.
Decision-aid techniques are methodological tools capable of handling simultaneously the various facets characterizing such problems (economic, social, technical, environmental, etc.). Therefore detailed simulation models have to be incorporated into the decision models. The application of simulation-optimization methods to planning and managing groundwater systems has become an area of active research.