State of the Art Report on Mathematical Methods for Groundwater Pollution Source Identification

1527 *Fa {Fa The reliable assessment of hazards or risks arising from groundwater contamination problems and the design of ecient and e€ective techniques to mitigate these problems require the capability to predict the behavior of chemical contaminants in ̄owing water. Most attempts at quantifying contaminant transport have relied on a solution of some form of a well-known governing equation referred to as advection-dispersion-reaction equation. To choose an appropriate remediation strategy, knowledge of the contaminant release source and time release history becomes pertinent. As additional contaminated sites are being detected, it is almost impossible to perform exhaustive drilling, testing, and chemical ®ngerprint analysis every time. Moreover, chemical ®ngerprinting and site records are not sucient to allow a unique solution for the timing of source releases. The purpose of this paper is to present and review mathematical methods that have been developed during the past 15 years to identify the contaminant source location and recover the time release history. # 2001 AEHS