Improved Groundwater Modeling Using An Open and Free Environment Called Mflab

Improved groundwater modeling using an open and free environment called mflab Groundwater model input and output generally often is overwhelmingly complex, requiring some kind of user interface. But graphical user interfaces prevent reproduction of the model creation process and, therefore strict quality control is not possible. They further tend to lock the user up, are closed and, therefore, are unsuitable for research. To overcome these problems, we develop a modeling environment to assemble, run and analyze models from the MODFLOW suite (MT3DMS, Seawat etc.), by combining a powerful interactive scripting/ programming and visualization environment, Matlab, with Excel as a parameter container. Models are assembled in Matlab, after which routines generate the input files for MODFLOW, SEAWAT etc., launches the required models, reads back their output and then analyzes and visualizes the results. In Matlab we can work with thousands of functions on arrays of arbitrary size. We can assemble a model step by step, interactively test each of them and record them in a script for later reproduction and improvement. Porting Matlab routines to almost identical free environments like Octave and Scilab makes this modeling entirely free. Therefore, mflab is put on the web, free for anyone to use and encouraging joined further development. The aim is implementation of all packages. Reproducible groundwater modeling without worries over file formats or option details should thus become routine. Students have used it since spring 2009 for their MSc and PhD work dealing with density flow and subsurface energy storage invoking MT3DMS, SEAWAT and MF2K with the Sea-Water Intrusion Package. It is further used to extract and run arbitrary portions from the country-wide web-published groundwater model of the Netherlands, which allows immediate study of any subregion by everybody. Efficient use for observation analysis, model calibration and prediction will be demonstrated.