Simulation Optimization Models for Groundwater Management

This chapter focuses on the applications of simulation optimization models for various groundwater management problems. As the groundwater moves in the subsurface through the highly anisotropic and heterogeneous porous media, the simulation of flow and transport processes is a highly complex one and hence the appropriate groundwater management poses a number of challenges. The chapter shows that groundwater management using simulation optimization models from its importance and necessity to application to a few case studies. It introduces groundwater flow and transport governing equations and explains numerical procedures to be followed for solving these equations. The chapter analyses details of evolution of optimization techniques. Due to the intensive developments in the surface water resources, and significant impacts on the hydrological cycle due to climate change, the groundwater resources are now overstressed leading to various quantity and quality issues. About 97% of the potentially available fresh water is beneath the ground surface in the form of groundwater.