A multi-scale agent-based distributed simulation framework for groundwater pollution management

Susanne I. Schmidt, Cristian Picioreanu, Bart Craenen, Rae Mackay, Jan Ulrich Kreft*, Georgios Theodoropoulos

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceedings/Edited volumeConference contributionScientificpeer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Groundwater is like dark matter - we know very little apart from the fact that it is hugely important. Given the scarcity of data, mathematical modelling can come to the rescue but existing groundwater models are mainly restricted to simulate the transport and degradation of contaminants on the scale of whole contaminated field sites by averaging out the effect of spatial heterogeneity on the availability of the pollutant to the degrading organisms. These coarse-scale mean-field models therefore tend to rely on fitting to data rather than being predictive. Also, they are less suited to incorporate spatial variability and non-linear kinetics and feedbacks. We propose to solve the two mutually exacerbating problems of environmental patchiness and data scarcity by developing a flexible and robust distributed simulation framework that uses an ensemble of small scale simulations running on different processors/computers to scale-up, i.e. to feed the effect of small-scale patchiness into a concurrent site-scale simulation of the dynamics of groundwater pollutant degradation. Our scaling approach solves problem #1 by simulating dynamics also on the small scale where some of the patchiness resides, and problem #2 by enabling rigorous validation of our small-scale model and scaling approach with laboratory data, which are high quality at low cost.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings - 15th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Distributed Simulation and Real Time Applications, DS-RT 2011
EditorsDavid Roberts, J.Mark Pullen
Pages18-27
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2011
Event15th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Distributed Simulation and Real Time Applications, DS-RT 2011 - Salford, Manchester, United Kingdom
Duration: 4 Sept 20117 Sept 2011

Conference

Conference15th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Distributed Simulation and Real Time Applications, DS-RT 2011
Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
CitySalford, Manchester
Period4/09/117/09/11

Keywords

  • agent-based systems
  • bioremediation
  • distributed simulation
  • groundwater
  • individual-based models
  • multi-scale modelling

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