UC Santa Barbara

A heuristic approach based on facility location theory effectively augments groundwater quality monitoring configurations through the strategic siting of additional wells. The approach is an alternative to variance‐based schemes previously established for the augmentation problem. The method developed herein is practical in that it (1) is relatively easily understood, (2) is not difficult to implement and solve, and (3) does not require a large number of preexisting observation points. The approach has been applied to a case study involving a landfill‐contaminated buried valley aquifer in southwest Ohio. Configurations derived by the heuristic approach exhibit two key characteristics: (1) location of wells near areas of high estimated contaminant concentration and (2) interwell separation distances that facilitate areal plume coverage. Copyright 1992 by the American Geophysical Union.