Multiobjective Design of Groundwater Monitoring Network Under Epistemic Uncertainty

A methodology is proposed for optimal design of groundwater quality monitoring networks under epistemic uncertainty. The proposed methodology considers spatiotemporal pollutant concentrations as fuzzy numbers. It incorporates fuzzy ordinary kriging (FOK) within the decision model formulation for spatial estimation of contaminant concentration values. A multiobjective monitoring network design model incorporating the objectives of fuzzy mass estimation error and spatial coverage of the designed network is developed. Nondominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm-II (NSGA-II) is used for solving the monitoring network design model. Performances of the proposed model are evaluated for hypothetical illustrative system. Evaluation results indicate that the proposed methodology perform satisfactorily under uncertain system conditions. These performance evaluation results demonstrate the potential applicability of the proposed methodology for optimal groundwater contaminant monitoring network design under epistemic uncertainty.