The sentinel method used in identification of the position and trajectory of a source of pollution

Abstract

In order to mode1 groundwater pollution, knowledge of physical parameters such as convection, diffusion and reaction coefficients is required, as well as pollution parameters. Since these cannot be mea-sured, they are determined instead by solving an inverse problem. The aim of this paper is to test a new approach, the sentinel method, in evaluating some of these parameters.

Our concern here is the localization of a source of pollution. In the first section we assume that the source of pollution is fixed, the objective being to determine its position. In the second section the source moves, in which case the trajectory becomes the unknown.

Keywords:

• Inverse problems
• nonlinear models
• sentinels' method
• parameters' estimation