Decision Analyses Related to Groundwater Remediation - 17051
Traditional decision analyses of groundwater remediation scenarios frequently fail because the probability of adverse, unanticipated events occurring is often high. This is driven by many factors including that (1) the models developed to represent the flow and transport in contaminated aquifers are typically simpler than reality and do not account for all the important governing processes, (2) probability distributions are assigned to critical performance parameters (such as model inputs or characteristics of the engineered remediation systems) even though some of these parameters might be unknown or not be very well constrained. However, there is a novel decision analysis methodology and a computational tool based on Bayesian Information-Gap Decision Theory (BIG-DT) that are designed to mitigate the shortcomings of the models and probabilistic decision analyses by leveraging a non-probabilistic decision theory -- information-gap decision theory. The new decision analysis methodology considers possible models that have not been explicitly enumerated and does not require us to commit to a particular probability distribution for model and remediation-design parameters. Both the set of possible models and the set of possible probability distributions grow as the degree of uncertainty increases. The fundamental question that BIG-DT asks is 'How large can these sets be before a particular decision results in an undesirable outcome?'. The decision that allows these sets to be the largest is considered to be the best option. In this way, BIG-DT enables robust decision-support for groundwater remediation problems. Here, we apply BIG-DT to a representative groundwater remediation scenario where different options for hydraulic containment and pump and treat are being considered. BIG-DT requires many model runs and high-performance computing resources are needed when complex models are used. We demonstrate the BIG-DT analyses on a series of synthetic problems that are designed to be consistent with real-world problems such as Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) contamination sites. We also discuss a general framework for how the BIG-DT analyses will be carried out at the chromium groundwater contamination site at LANL. BIG-DT is implemented in Julia (a high-level, high-performance dynamic programming language for technical computing) and is part of the MADS framework (http://mads.lanl.gov and http://madsjulia.github.io/Mads.jl). (authors)