Abstract
The present study deals with the analysis of pathogen transport in groundwater and estimation of transport parameters. The parameter estimation is formulated as a least-squares minimisation problem in which the parameters are estimated by minimizing the deviations between the models predicted and experimentally observed pathogen concentrations. A parameter estimation procedure is developed by coupling an analytical model simulating one-dimensional pathogen transport with a genetic algorithm. Genetic algorithms are used to estimate the transport parameters, dispersion coefficient and inactivation coefficient. The uniqueness and stability of the inverse procedure is analysed. The performance of the optimisation algorithm is assessed by generating hypothetically generated pathogen concentration data. It is found that genetic algorithm optimisation technique converge to the true solution and hence can be used as a tool for the estimation of the pathogen transport parameters.
Acknowledgement
This article is among the selected papers presented at the “Hydro-2012” conference held at IIT Bombay on December 7-8, 2012, and was short-listed by the Editor for publication in this Journal after re-review and revisions where necessary.