Probabilistic risk analysis of groundwater remediation strategies
Heterogeneity of subsurface environments and insufficient site characterization are some of the reasons why decisions about groundwater exploitation and remediation have to be made under uncertainty. A typical decision maker chooses between several alternative remediation strategies by balancing the...
| Autores: | , , , , , , , |
|---|---|
| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión aceptada para publicación |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2009 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) |
| Repositorio: | DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:digital.csic.es:10261/415305 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/10261/415305 https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/70350467745 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Groundwater hydrology Subsurface environments http://metadata.un.org/sdg/12 http://metadata.un.org/sdg/11 http://metadata.un.org/sdg/3 http://metadata.un.org/sdg/6 http://metadata.un.org/sdg/9 Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns |
| Sumario: | Heterogeneity of subsurface environments and insufficient site characterization are some of the reasons why decisions about groundwater exploitation and remediation have to be made under uncertainty. A typical decision maker chooses between several alternative remediation strategies by balancing their respective costs with the probability of their success or failure. We conduct a probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) to determine the likelihood of the success of a permeable reactive barrier, one of the leading approaches to groundwater remediation. While PRA is used extensively in many engineering fields, its applications in hydrogeology are scarce. This is because rigorous PRA requires one to quantify structural and parametric uncertainties inherent in predictions of subsurface flow and transport. We demonstrate how PRA can facilitate a comprehensive uncertainty quantification for complex subsurface phenomena by identifying key transport processes contributing to a barrier's failure, each of which is amenable to uncertainty analysis. Probability of failure of a remediation strategy is computed by combining independent and conditional probabilities of failure of each process. Individual probabilities can be evaluated either analytically or numerically or, barring both, can be inferred from expert opinion. Copyright 2009 by the American Geophysical Union. |
|---|