Optimisation of integrated and adaptive remediation design and operations scheduling

Those responsible for managing or remediating chemical or radionuclide impacted sediments, soils, surface or groundwater including designing remedial solutions and operation projects benefit from tools that help them find acceptable, efficient and effective solutions to complex and multi-faceted planning challenges at efficient cost points. However, the more challenging sites remain resistant to efficient and effective remediation. These are precisely the environmental problems that remain as persistent fiscal and technological challenges as the success of the heuristic trial-and-error approach or using simplified conceptual site models is underpowered in this problem arena. The tools herein enable formal, physically consistent and robust analysis of optimal remedial designs for environmental contamination problems using groundwater pump and treat and in-situ bioremediation technologies of any level of complexity including formal evaluation of uncertainty in design performance. Moreover, these tools automatically adapt the remediation system and its operations to the plume as it undergoes the remediation processes. During remediation the plumes change in shape and intensity, hence optimal and automated adaptive application of the remediation processes over time allows for improved fiscal and resource planning when considering and comparing costs, benefits and implementability between differing feasible approaches for achieving site clean-up. (author)