Saltwater intrusion occurs in coastal areas worldwide and a theoretical investigation of its sources is crucial because dissolved salts are probably the most common contaminants in freshwater. In the case of coastal aquifers, contamination arises from saltwater invasion, caused primarily by human activities due to heavy urbanisation. Hence, there is a need to predict the location and movement o...

The present study implements a stochastic optimization technique to optimally manage freshwater pumping from coastal aquifers. Our simulations utilize the well-known sharp interface model for saltwater intrusion in coastal aquifers together with its known analytical solution. The objective is to maximize the total volume of freshwater pumped by the wells from the aquifer while, at the same time...

Four topics were studied concerning the modeling of ground-water flow in coastal aquifers with analytic elements: (1) practical experience was obtained by constructing a ground-water model of the shallow aquifers below the Delmarva Peninsula USA using the commercial program MVAEM; (2) a significant increase in performance was obtained by implementing the theory for variable density flow in a co...

We analyze the management of a coastal aquifer under seawater intrusion using distributed control methods. The aquifer’s state is taken as the water head elevation, which varies with time and in space since extraction, natural recharge and lateral water flows vary with time and in space. The water head, in turn, induces a temporalspatial seawater intrusion process, which changes the volume of f...

We analyze the combined effects of aquifer heterogeneity and pumping operations on seawater intrusion (SWI) in coastal aquifers, a phenomenon which is threatening Mediterranean and worldwide regions. We conceptualize the aquifer as a three-dimensional randomly heterogeneous porous medium, where the spatial distribution of permeability is uncertain. The geological setting of our study is pattern...

The Algarve region, in Portugal, is strongly affected by the intense exploitation of its groundwater resources. The fact it is a coastal area implies that the management of these resources is of enormous complexity. Thus, there is a need to create capable tools for the evaluation of the risks and uncertainty associated to this case, so that risk maps can be made, and be used in the decision-mak...

This study examines an approach for planning groundwater development in coastal aquifers. The seawater intrusion is controlled through a series of barrier extraction wells. The multi-objective management problem is cast as a nonlinear, nonconvex combinatorial model and is solved using a coupled simulation–optimization approach. A density-dependent groundwater flow and transport model, SEAWAT is...