Management of Subsurface Water Bodies: a Computer-aided Approach to Model Choice and Implementation

Once a contaminant has been detected in an aquifer, mathematical models can be used to evaluate the transport time or exposure risk and the response to planned actions such as pumping and recharging for clean-up operations. More than 300 computer programs for subsurface water system simulations are now available for micro- and mini-computers, and it is becoming almost impossible for anyone dealing with a practical problem to go rapidly through this body of literature and find the model that best fits any specific problem. This paper shows that the use of a rule base and a flexible software environment to support the model choice and implementation may significantly help in making the development of environmental modeling easily available to a larger set of users, including scientists involved in ecotoxicological research. The rule base may in fact reproduce, at least in part, the experience of the model developers, which would not be easily accessible for the users in another way. Coupling traditional programming techniques with those derived from expert systems allows a user with elementary knowledge of software and mathematical models to analyse quantitatively a wide set of subsurface contaminant problems.