Calibration and Reliability in Groundwater Modelling: Credibility of Modelling

(Proceedings of ModelCARE 2007 Conference, held in Denmark, September 2007). IAHS Publ. 320, 2008, 137-141.

Quantifying the economic benefit of groundwater monitoring: a pilot study

Frans van geer, annemieke marsman & gijs M. C. M. janssen

TNO Built Environment and Geosciences,PO Box 80015, NL, 3508 TA Utrecht, The Netherlands

frans.vangeer@tno.nl

Abstract Usually the design of the monitoring system is based on the relation between the monitoring effort and the uncertainty of the information. Often the estimation error standard deviation is used as a criterion for the design. Despite the fact that, for scientists, the standard deviation as a measure of uncertainty is a logical criterion, water managers are unable to deduce the exact value of the standard deviation. Therefore, in practice, the criterion is chosen more or less arbitrarily. In this paper we present a pilot study where we have quantified the benefit of a groundwater head monitoring system in economic terms. We considered three different types of land use. For each land use a relation between the groundwater heads and the economic loss was derived. Combining the probability of having a sub-optimal groundwater head from measurements with the loss functions for the different land uses, we can calculate the risk in economic terms. The monitoring system with the lowest sum of risk and monitoring cost is the optimal monitoring system.

Keywords groundwater monitoring; risk analysis; cost benefit analysis