Abstract
High level of groundwater in urban areas may cause major problems in construction and mining projects. One effective solution is to implement drainage wells to lower the water table into the desired level through an appropriate pumping strategy. In this paper, placement and capacity of the dewatering wells are optimized by minimizing the total costs of a groundwater lowering system (GLS) through a simulation-optimization approach. For this purpose, MODFLOW, the groundwater simulation software, is coupled with the Firefly Optimization Algorithm (FOA) to find the optimal solution. The proposed FOA-MODFLOW model is tested in an urban area in east southern part of Iran, Kerman city’s ancient Mosque region. Results show that the obtained cost-effective design noticeably outperforms the consulting engineers’ proposal in terms of both the number of drilled wells and the associated costs with justifiable constraints. Optimal strategy satisfies the constraints by suggesting construction of two wells with totally pumping rate of 5503 m3/day while the water table is dropped 1.5 m with a ground subsidence less than 80 mm in the region. Additionally, an investigation on the value of various design parameters emphasizes on the sensitivity of the solutions to the permissible groundwater level and the well’s maximum pumping rates among the others.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bayer P, Duran E, Baumann R, Finkel M (2009) Optimized groundwater drawdown in a subsiding urban mining area. J Hydrol 365:95–104
Cashman PM, Preene M (2013) Groundwater lowering in construction: a practical guide to dewatering, Second edn. Taylor & Francis, Boca Raton
Datta B, Chakrabarty D, Dhar A (2011) Identification of unknown groundwater polloution sources using classical optimization with linked simulation. Hydro Environ Res 5:25–36
Elci A, Ayvaz M (2014) Diffrencial evoloution algorithm based optimization for site selection of groundwater production wells with consideration of volnreability concept. J Hydrol 511:736–749
Forth R (2004) Groundwater and geotechnical aspects of deep excavations in Hong Kong. Eng Geol 72:253–260
Guar S, Chahar BR, Graillot D (2011) Analatic elements method and particle swarm optimization based simulation-optimization model for groundwater management. J Hydrol 402:217–227
Harbaugh AW (2005) MODFLOW-2005, the US geological survey modular ground-water model: the ground-water flow process. US Department of the Interior, US Geological Survey, Reston, pp 6–A16
Jha MK, Datta B (2014) Linked simulation-optimization based dedicated monitoring network Design for Unknown Pollutant Source Identification using dynamic time warping distance. Water Resour Manag 28:4161
Li Y, Hilton AC (2007) Optimal groundwater monitoring design using ant colony optimization paradigm. Environ Model Softw 22:110–116
Li F, Feng P, Zhang W et al (2013) An integrated groundwater management mode based on control indexes of groundwater quantity and level. Water Resour Manag 27:3273
Liu CW, Chou YL, Lin ST et al (2010) Management of High Groundwater Level Aquifer in the Taipei Basin. Water Resour Manag 24:3513
Mahab Ghods Consulting Engineers (2008) Plan of groundwater level decreasing around the Kerman mosque (short-term plan). Improvement and Renovation Organization, Kerman municipality (In Persian)
Mousavi SJ, Shourian M (2010) Adaptive sequentially space-filling metamodeling applied in optimal water quantity allocation at basin scale. Water Resour res 46:W03520. doi:10.1029/2008WR007076
Powers P, Corwin A, Schmall P, Kaeck W (2007) Construction dewatering and groundwater control. Wiley, NY
Pujades E, Vazquez-sune E, Carrera J, Jurado A (2014) Dewatering of deep excavation undertaken in a layerd soil. Eng Geol 178:15–27
Wang SK, Wee YP, Ofori G (2002) A decision support sysytem for dewatering systems selection. Build Environ 37:625–645
Yang XS (2010) Engineering optimization, an introduction with metaheuristic applications. Wiley, NY
Yuan H, Gai-ling Z, Guo-yong Y (2009) Numerical simulation of dewatering thick unconsolidated aquifers for safety of underground coal mining. Min Sci Technol 19:312–316
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Shourian, M., Davoudi, S.M.J. Optimum Pumping Well Placement and Capacity Design for a Groundwater Lowering System in Urban Areas with the Minimum Cost Objective. Water Resour Manage 31, 4207–4225 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-017-1740-4
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-017-1740-4