Comparison of surrogate models with different methods in groundwater remediation process

Surrogate modelling is an effective tool for reducing computational burden of simulation optimization. In this article, polynomial regression (PR), radial basis function artificial neural network (RBFANN), and kriging methods were compared for building surrogate models of a multiphase flow simulation model in a simplified nitrobenzene contaminated aquifer remediation problem. In the model accuracy analysis process, a 10-fold cross validation method was adopted to evaluate the approximation accuracy of the three surrogate models. The results demonstrated that: RBFANN surrogate model and kriging surrogate model had acceptable approximation accuracy, and further that kriging model’s approximation accuracy was slightly higher than RBFANN model. However, the PR model demonstrated unacceptably poor approximation accuracy. Therefore, the RBFANN and kriging surrogates were selected and used in the optimization process to identify the most cost-effective remediation strategy at a nitrobenzene-contaminated site. The optimal remediation costs obtained with the two surrogate-based optimization models were similar, and had similar computational burden. These two surrogate-based optimization models are efficient tools for optimal groundwater remediation strategy identification.