Development of a ground-water modeling system for military installation restoration

The U.S. Army Engineer (USAE) Waterways Experiment Station is leading a multi-agency program which is developing an integrated, comprehensive groundwater modeling system in support of installation cleanup. Major aspects of this program include: evaluation of existing modeling technology, investigation of fate and transport mechanisms for military-unique compounds (e.g., explosives), investigation of the impacts of subsurface heterogeneities on remedial effectiveness, design of concise user environments for disparate users and models, and implementation of the models on differing computing platforms. An initial version of the groundwater modeling system has been developed for both UNIX workstations and personal computers running Windows 3.1. These products represent an initial step in the process and computational developments required to meet the militaryʹs and the nationʹs needs for characterization and remediation-oriented modeling. Continued development plans call for a focused combination of research in natural and remedial processes, heterogeneity-induced effects on fate, transport, remediation and computational sciences.