Calibration and Reliability in Groundwater Modelling: From Uncertainty to Decision Making (Proceedings of ModelCARE’2005, The Hague, The Netherlands, June 2005). IAHS Publ. 304, 2006. pp.25–30.

A tomographic approach to identify hydraulic conductivity of a phreatic aquifer by the "differential system method"

Mauro Giudici1, Giovanni Angelo Meles1, Giansilvio Ponzini1, Chiara Vassena1 & Guido Parravicini2

1 Università degli Studi di Milano, Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Sezione di Geofisica,
via Cicognara 7, I-20129 Milano, Italy

mauro.giudici@unimi.it

2 Università degli Studi di Milano, Dipartimento di Fisica, via Celoria 16, I-20133 Milano, Italy

Abstract The hydraulic conductivity of a phreatic aquifer, under the Dupuit assumption, can be determined by solving an inverse problem. If two stationary sets of data (heads and source terms) corresponding to different flow situations are available, the inverse problem can be solved with a simple modification of the differential system method. Numerical tests show the effectiveness of this method as well as the excellent results that can be obtained by applying it to multiple sets of stationary data; in this case different couples of sets of data can be used to identify conductivities in different subdomains.

Keywords hydraulic conductivity; inverse problem; phreatic aquifer