Comparison of Hydraulic Tomography with Traditional Methods at a Highly Heterogeneous Site

Over the past several decades, different groundwater modeling approaches of various complexities and data use have been developed. A recently developed approach for mapping hydraulic conductivity (K) and specific storage (Ss) heterogeneity is hydraulic tomography, the performance of which has not been compared to other more `` traditional'' methods that have been utilized over the past several decades. In this study, we compare seven methods of modeling heterogeneity which are (1) kriging, (2) effective parameter models, (3) transition probability/Markov Chain geostatistics models, (4) geological models, (5) stochastic inverse models conditioned to local K data, (6) hydraulic tomography, and (7) hydraulic tomography conditioned to local K data using data collected in five boreholes at a field site on the University of Waterloo (UW) campus, in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The performance of each heterogeneity model is first assessed during model calibration. In particular, the correspondence between simulated and observed drawdowns is assessed using the mean absolute error norm, (L-1), mean square error norm (L-2), and correlation coefficient (R) as well as through scatterplots. We also assess the various models on their ability to predict drawdown data not used in the calibration effort from nine pumping tests. Results reveal that hydraulic tomography is best able to reproduce these tests in terms of the smallest discrepancy and highest correlation between simulated and observed drawdowns. However, conditioning of hydraulic tomography results with permeameter K data caused a slight deterioration in accuracy of drawdown predictions which suggests that data integration may need to be conducted carefully.