Engineering Commons^™

Bayesian Model Averaging On Hydraulic Conductivity Estimation And Groundwater Head Prediction, Xiaobao Li

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Characterization of aquifer heterogeneity is inherently difficult because of the insufficiency of data, the inflexibility of parameterization methods, and non-uniqueness of parameterization methods. Groundwater predictions are greatly affected by multiple interpretations of aquifer properties and the uncertainties of model parameters. This study introduces a Bayesian model averaging (BMA) method along with multiple generalized parameterization (GP) methods to identify hydraulic conductivity and along with multiple simulation models to predict groundwater head and quantify the prediction uncertainty. Two major issues about BMA are discussed. The first problem is with using Occam’s window in usual BMA applications. Occam’s window only accepts models in …