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.220–226.


A synthetic study of the worth of transmissivity and head data to delineate groundwater protection zones in braided alluvial aquifers

J. Kerrou1, P. Renard1, I. Lunati2 & H. J. W. M. Hendricks Franssen3

1 Centre for Hydrogeology, University of Neuchâtel, Emile Argand 11, CH-2007 Neuchâtel, Switzerland

jaouher.kerrou@unine.ch

2 Institute of Fluid Dynamics, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), ETH-Zentrum, Sonneggstrasse 3, CH-8092 Zürich, Switzerland

3 Institute of Hydromechanics and Water Resources Management, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), ETH-Hönggerberg, CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland

Abstract Kriging, stochastic conditional simulations, and stochastic inversion are compared to characterize a synthetic hypothetical braided alluvial aquifer. The performance of the three techniques is compared in terms of reproduction of a 10-day capture zone of a pumping well. The results obtained compare fairly well with previous investigations dealing with the stochastic delineation of capture zones. However, the presence of a large number of deterministic channels in the reference transmissivity field reduces significantly the accuracy of the three techniques as compared to previous published results.

Keywords capture zones; inverse; kriging; stochastic simulations; uncertainty