Keynote Lectures

Numerical Modeling of groundwater flow, solute transport and heat transfer in porous geological media

Modeling of groundwater flow through geological porous media is a useful tool in environmental, geological, and civil engineering.

Daniela Blessent investigates hydrogeology numerical modeling and in her lecture she will talk about the results of finite element numerical modeling in different contexts (saturated and variably-saturated flow in mining waste, solute transport in heterogeneous porous media, coupled surface-subsurface flow, and heat transfer in geothermal reservoirs).

AARON PACKMAN

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

DANIELA BLESSENT

UNIVERSIDAD DE MEDELLÍN

MICHAEL SCHNIEDERS

NGWA

ALBERTO GUADAGNINI

POLITECNICO DI MILANO

ROGER BECKIE

BRITISH COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

ROBIN DUFOUR

DHI

Microorganisms influence extremely diverse processes in surface and groundwater systems.

Aaron Packman investigates the analysis and modeling of the environmental transport phenomena and in his presentation he will talk about:

The unique physical-biological couplings that control microbial dynamics and biogeochemical transformations at river-groundwater interfaces.
Observations and theory relating microbial dynamics across the river-groundwater continuum in the context of pathogen transmission in agricultural landscapes.
Complex coupled dynamics associated with microbial growth and metabolism at surface-groundwater interfaces.

Microbial dynamics in coupled surface-groundwater systems

RUBEN JUANES

MIT

The drainage from waste-rock piles at mine sites is difficult to predict and uncertain because the fundamental hydrologic and geochemical processes are poorly understood. The analysis is further complicated by the strong physical and chemical heterogeneity of waste rock and climatic factors.

Roger Beckie has been working to develop a framework to predict the quantity and quality of drainage from waste rock that can be used to guide management and disposal strategies.

Applied Hydrogeology to Mining

During the last 50 years, the groundwater industry defined a good well as one that meets a desired yield, is relatively free from contamination, offers sand-free production, is cheap, and has a design life of 25 years.

Michael Schnieders is the current lecturer of the National Groundwater Agency of USA and in his lecture he will talk about new goals that include looking at a specific water quality, evaluating performance, and having increased expectations with regard to useful life and reasonable cost.

Redefining Life Expectations of New Wells Through an Analysis of Past Failures

Robin Dufour has a Master Degree from the Neuchatel University in Switzerland. His main areas of interest are GIS, flow numerical models and karstic hydrogeolic studies.

Currently Mr. Dufour is Managing Director of DHI Perú a leader company in water numeric models.

FEFLOW-FEPEST and open pit dewatering:
New tools for evaluating uncertainty in mine dewatering rates and optimizing the cost effectiveness of field characterization programs

The geostatistical analysis and stochastic simulation of soil particle-size curves in heterogeneous aquifers is important for the numerical modeling of porous media processes.

Alberto Guadagnini is professor of the Politécnico de Milán and investigates the numerical and theoretical solution of hydrogeology problems. In his lecture Alberto will talk about an aproximation that provides us with the ability to project the entire information content embedded within the data onto a computational grid, with the final aim of characterizing unsampled locations in the system

Stochastic simulation of soil particle-size curves in heterogeneous aquifer systems through a Bayes space approach

Impact of wettability on two-phase displacement and fracture in porous media: from pore to field

Multiphase flow in porous media is important in many natural and industrial processes, including the enhanced oil recovery.

Ruben Juanes investigates oil production and has been acknowledged many times by energy agencies of USA, in his lecture Ruben Juanes will present two of his investigations:

A microfluidic flow cell study that demonstrates the powerful control of wettability on multiphase flow in porous media.
A granular-pack Hele-Shaw cell study that shows that the wetting properties exert a strong, non-monotonic impact on fracture morphology, and potential implications on hydraulic fracture operations in low permeability formations.

DANIEL TARTAKOVSKY

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Reservoir simulations and management under uncertainty

Nonlinear parabolic equations with uncertain coefficients play an important role in science and engineering, including geosciences where they are used to describe multiphase flow in heterogeneous porous media.

Daniel Tartakovsky investigates applied mathematics for envirnomental fluid mechanics and in his presentation he will talk about alternative probabilistic approaches for uncertainty quantification and other techniques based on a spectral decomposition of state variables in the probability space.