Particle Filters to Estimate Properties of Confined Aquifers

Abstract

Involving a limited resource, the assessment of groundwater aquifers is of utmost importance. A key component of any such assessment is the determination of key properties that permit water resource managers to estimate aquifer drawdown and safe yield. This paper presents a particle filtering approach to estimate aquifer properties from transient data sets, leveraging recently published analytically-derived models for confined aquifers and using sample-based approximations of underlying probability distributions. The approach is examined experimentally through validation against three common aquifer testing problems: determination of (i) transmissivity and storage coefficient from non-leaky confined aquifer performance tests, (ii) transmissivity, storage coefficient, and vertical hydraulic conductivity from leaky confined aquifer performance tests, and (iii) transmissivity and storage coefficient from non-leaky confined aquifer performance tests with noisy data and boundary effects. On the first two well-addressed problems, the results using the particle filter approach compare favorably to those obtained by other published methods. The results to the third problem, which the particle filter approach can tackle more naturally than the previously-published methods, underscore the flexibility of particle filtering and, in turn, the promise such methods offer for a myriad of other geoscience problems.

Transport behaviors of humic acid, kaolin and kaolin–humic acid compound colloids on naphthalene in floating islands with biofilmed fillers

“…By rights, the removal amounts of the kaolin-humic acid compound colloids would be the oppositely highest in those three different contaminated colloids. It was checked that the kaolin-humic acid compound colloids with the properties of the adsorption of humic acid colloids and self-coagulation of the kaolin colloids both of which were propitious to concentration of the contaminated colloids to the much higher levels for making the bigger particles and then precipitate them out of the waters to decrease the kaolin-humic acid compound colloids concentrations in effluents (Alem et al 2015;Yu et al 2015;Field et al 2016). Thus, the phenomena in WP1, WP2 and WP3 of Fig.…”

“…The humic acid colloids with the properties of hydrophilicity and hydrophobicity for forming and stabilizing the more colloids in natural waters were to present the highest concentrations of naphthalene and colloids in effluents (Stevenson 1982;Marchal et al 2013;Yu et al 2013;Rao et al 2014). The kaolin colloids could border and absorb some soluble organic matters and metal ions (like Fe 3+ and Al 3+ ) certainly keeping the kaolin colloids suspended at the low concentrations in natural waters (Simarro et al 2011;Field et al 2016). When the metal-ion-absorbed kaolin colloids went across the fillers of the floating islands, the kaolin colloids would be intercepted on the biofilmed filler surfaces with the help of Fe 3+ Fig.…”

“…Concentrations of naphthalene on humic acid colloids (WP1-1), kaolin colloids (WP2-1) and kaolin-humic acid compounded colloids (WP3-1) in influents ( ) and the different effluents were gathered with the different filling percentages of 0.0 ( ), 20.0 ( ), 40.0 ( ), 60.0 ( ) and 80.0 ( ) of fillers under the conditions of colloid concentrations in influents of 20.0 mg L −1 , respectively. Besides, the contaminated humic acid colloids (WP1-2), contaminated kaolin colloids (WP2-2) and kaolin-humic acid contaminated compounded colloids (WP3-2) were measured as well to analysis the behaviors of naphthalene in waters and Al 3+ usually used as the coagulants of the colloids in natural waters (Arab et al 2014;Ozaki et al 2015;Field et al 2016). By rights, the removal amounts of the kaolin-humic acid compound colloids would be the oppositely highest in those three different contaminated colloids.…”

“…When the absorbed amounts of the metal ions were less than those of the cation capacity of kaolin, they would play the efficient roles of division of kaolin particles for easier stabilization in waters. In addition, the composite kaolin-humic acid compounded colloids were fused the characteristics of the humic acid and kaolin on colloids and to facilitate the naphthalene translocation in waters as well (Arab et al 2014;Tcaciuc et al 2015;Field et al 2016). Based on the behaviors of the humic acid, kaolin and kaolin-humic acid compounded colloids, the naphthalene removal behaviors were seriously done with the contaminated colloid removal behaviors in floating islands by acquisition and interception of fillers, meaning that all the suspended contaminated colloids would comparatively charge the naphthalene transports to move into far distances in waters compared with the soluble organic matters and metal ions which would not outstandingly change the naphthalene solubility (Sponza and Oztekin 2011;Avio et al 2017).…”

Land subsidence modelling for decision making on groundwater abstraction under emergency situation

“…Because many model parameters are uncertain and the observations are limited, the model calibration and the prediction uncertainty analysis should be conducted for highly parameterized model. The Monte Carlo filter method, or particle filter method, for the parameter estimation and uncertainty analysis has been proposed (Kitagawa, 1998;Liu and West, 2001) and applied to the aquifer test problem (Field et al, 2016). However, the number of forward runs can be large if the filtering and resampling are conducted by a neutral distribution such as Liu and West (2001).…”