Groundwater cleanup: The optimization perspective (a literature review)

Contamination of groundwater resources is becoming a serious environmental problem. Huge investments are usually needed to contain and to restore contaminated groundwater, thus reducing costs is challenging. Simulation-optimization techniques can obviously play an important role here. The application of these techniques to reducing remediation costs has become an area of active research, and much progress has been made towards developing mathematical models for groundwater management and remediation. These models are built with a view to aiding the proper identification of the most cost-effective measures to be taken, while satisfying a set of stated physical, technological, legal and other constraints. The literature shows that during the last fifteen years a great deal of work has been done on this subject. This paper presents a synthesis of the optimization models reported in the literature on this topic, and discusses both their mathematical characteristics and their suitability.