Wednesday, April 2, 2008 : 8:00 a.m.
Isn't the Calibration of an Interpretive Ground Water Model the Testing of Multiple Conceptual Models?
It could be argued that each time a model run is completed, reviewed, and reformulated a new conceptual model is being evaluated. It seems more often than not when groundwater models are being used as interpretative tools, the initial conceptual model to some degree is updated almost continuously with every modification of a boundary or parameter. Modelers often make statements like…those results are unreasonable, something else must be going on. This recognition and the changes to the model structure, boundaries or hydraulic properties constitute a testing of a somewhat different conceptual model. This suggests that some criteria are needed to decide if the results of a particular model formulation are probable, and a method to capture the corresponding results and incorporate them into an uncertainty analyses is needed. Fortunately the other speakers in this section will tell us how to do this!