Design Optimization of Groundwater Quality Management Challenges Using the Outer Approximation Method

Impacts to groundwater from anthropogenic sources have resulted in numerous occurrences of subsurface contamination plumes. The management of these plumes has resulted in the expenditure of billions of dollars worldwide. The protection of human health and the environment is the primary emphasis driving plume management. Various methods have been proposed to optimize the response action to the plume management system, including a combination of heuristic and formal optimization algorithms. These algorithms have been successful, albeit very computation intensive or labor intensive. The groundwater quality challenge solution using the outer approximation method is assessed, and appears to equal or outperform both other machine optimization techniques as well as human expert design. At one site alone, a life cycle savings of $72.6M dollars was projected when compared to an existing installed and operating remediation system. This result compares favorably with results from deployment of other optimization techniques on different projects that saved $100M and $90M in life cycle costs.