Calibration and Reliability in Groundwater Modelling: Credibility of Modelling

(Proceedings of ModelCARE 2007 Conference, held in Denmark, September 2007). IAHS Publ. 320, 2008, 240-244.

A critical review of the properties of forward and inverse problems in groundwater hydrology

Mauro Giudici¹, Timothy R. Ginn², Chiara Vassena¹,
Hanieh Haeri² & Laura FOGLIA²

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

mauro.giudici@unimi.it

2 Civil & Environmental Engineering, UC Davis, 1 Shields Av., California 95616, USA

Abstract Accurate identification of the parameters of groundwater flow and transport model (inverse problem) is mandatory in order to obtain reliable predictions (forward problem). Unfortunately inverse problems are seldom well-posed; in this paper we review the properties of the forward and inverse problems, in order to discuss some concepts related to the uniqueness and stability of the inverse problem.

Key words groundwater; forward problem; inverse problem; uniqueness; stability