Dynamic Modeling of Ground‐Water Quality Using Bayesian Techniques¹

Abstract

Water industry experts have been arguing that the traditional techniques are not an accurate means of measuring water contamination. This is mainly because these techniques emphasize neither the stochastic nature of the water contamination process nor the precision and the accuracy of the tested methods used by environmental laboratories. In this work, we describe the development and application of prototype Dynamic Bayesian Networks (DBNs) that model ground‐water quality to determine the impact of chemical contaminants on ground‐water quality in the Salalah area, which is allocated to the south of Oman. We also present a new technique for data pre‐processing because it is needed for the treatment of ground‐water datasets that are used as the data source to learn the probabilities for dynamic decision models. Among more than 20 wells in area, only four wells were selected to be analyzed and the results show that we achieved an acceptable level of efficiency.

A Bayesian belief network approach for assessing uncertainty in conceptual site models at contaminated sites

“…: (1) evaluating reductive dechlorination at TCE (trichloroethylene) contaminated sites [Stiber et al, 1999;Stiber et al, 2004], (2) public participation and stakeholder engagement in integrated management of groundwater contamination [Farmani et al, 2009;Farmani et al, 2012;Henriksen et al, 2007b;Henriksen et al, 2007a;Henriksen and Barlebo, 2008], (3) forecasting groundwater pollution levels [Shihab, 2008;Shihab and Chalabi, 2007], (4) assessing and mapping groundwater quality [Aguilera et al, 2013], and (5) detecting contaminant leakage from landfills [Small, 1997]. BBNs have also been applied to a wide range of other problems within the field of hydrology and water management.…”

An Efficient Method for Assessing Water Quality Based on Bayesian Belief Networks

“…A criterion is basically a scientific quantity upon which a judgment can be based [10,11]. In this work, however, we considered only the chemical parameters: total dissolved solids (TDS), electrical conductivity (EC) and water pH.…”