Optimized Pilot Point Emplacement Based Groundwater Flow Calibration Method for Heterogeneous Small-Scale Area

Abstract

Groundwater flow modeling in a small-scale area requires practical techniques to obtain high accuracy results. The effectiveness of the model calibration is the most challenging for simulating the hydraulic head. In pursuit of this, we proposed an optimized groundwater flow calibration method based on the pilot point emplacement technique for a 3D small-scale area in this work. Subsequently, two emplacement structures were tested during the experimentation, the regular pilot point placement, and the middle head measurement down gradient (MHMDG) placement with two different densities. The parameter estimation (PEST) numerical code applying the kriging interpolation was used to estimate the hydraulic conductivity field by MODFLOW. Moreover, geological SGrid models were chosen for the conceptual model. Thirty-seven observation wells were used for experimental simulations to test the proposed method in a heterogeneous confined aquifer. The result shows that the small-scale modeling was complicated, and the studying area presented a significant heterogeneity in horizontal hydraulic conductivity. The middle head measurement down gradient (MHMDG) pilot point case with the larger density gave the best R-squared 0.901 and minimum residual error of 0.0053 m compared to 0.880 and 0.078 m, respectively, for the regular placement. The calibration accuracy depended on the frequency and the emplacement of the pilot point. Therefore, the initial value should be technically selected to minimize the computation burden. The proposed techniques help to improve the groundwater flow model calibration based on the pilot point methodology for groundwater resources management.

Surrogate-Based Uncertainty Analysis for Groundwater Contaminant Transport in a Chromium Residue Site Located in Southern China

“…Previous studies [56,57] confirm the practicality of extracting hydrogeological model surfaces from GOCAD software (version 2017) geological model in either TIN or ASCII format for integration into Visual MODFLOW or GMS. A three-dimensional model of the study area (Figure 4) developed through a systematic process: (1) construction of a geological model using GOCAD's structural and stratigraphic workflow, incorporating data from 30 boreholes, (2) preservation of corrected strata in 'ASCII' point files, and (3) application of the Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) method in GMS for the interpolation of 'ASCII' point files.…”

Exploration and Sustainable Management of Groundwater Resources in Geologically Complex Terrain

“…In [3], an optimized groundwater flow calibration method based on the pilot point emplacement technique in a small-scale area was proposed. Small-scale modeling is complicated, and modeling in such an area presents significant heterogeneity in horizontal hydraulic conductivity.…”

A Critical Review of the Modelling Tools for the Reactive Transport of Organic Contaminants

“…To reduce the time required for calibration and to make this process more systematic and transparent, additional numerical tools can be used [589][590][591]. Recently, several calibration methods have been presented, including global optimisation methods [592], Bayesianbased calibration methods using Gaussian process error models [593], and pilot point calibration methods [594,595]. A promising alternative to the existing optimisation tools included in the modelling software are algorithms written in modern scientific languages such as R and Python, e.g., FloPy [596], ogs5py [597], RedModRPhree [598], toughie [599], and r2ogs5 [600].…”