Stochastic modeling of exposure and risk in a contaminated heterogeneous aquifer. 2: Application of Latin Hypercube Sampling

This research has developed a numerical stochastic methodology for analyzin g the uncertainty of groundwater flow and transport parameters and their ef fects on exposure and risk assessment. The Monte Carlo method is commonly u sed to analyze exposure uncertainty based on the uncertainty of each ground water parameter measured, If the Monte Carlo method was used for all parame ters in this study, it would have required an extremely large number of sim ulations. Therefore, a stochastic modeling approach based on Latin Hypercub e Sampling was used to reduce the number of simulations required and to mak e uncertainty analysis feasible, This technique was adapted to use samples from both the statistical distributions of nonspatial stochastic parameters and spatial and discrete hydraulic conductivity field simultaneously. The use of Latin Hypercube Sampling proved to be very efficient for modeling un certainty in exposure and risk assessment related to groundwater contaminat ion.