EGSIM

BMBF-Project EGSIM "Efficient groundwater simulation for the production of energy resources"

Project data:

Duration:                  01.10.2010 – 31.03.2013

Coordinator TUD:      Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Peter-Wolfgang Gräber

Partners :                 Ingenieurbüro für Grundwasser und Boden Leipzig (project supervisor)
DUALIS GmbH IT Solution, Dresden
TU Dresden, IAA

Funding:                   BMBF

The aim of the project is the development of software to simulate flow and reactive transport processes in the soil and the groundwater (porous media). Simulation of such processes is a basis for the planning of environmentally sound and energy-efficient lignite mining, with lignite being one of the most important energy sources in Germany. The planning engineer shall be enabled to develop and monitor sustainable water management projects by using an environment based on GIS software. Exemplary applications could be in the field of groundwater management in open-cast mining, or in renaturation of post-mining landscapes. By using optimized simulations significant amounts of water resources can be protected (f.e. environmental protection to sustain natural wetlands), and the amount groundwater pumping can be lowered, thus saving energy. Until now planning and simulation were carried out using individual calculations and static graphic analysis, sometimes requiring days or weeks to simulate reactive transport
processes. The parameter spaces resulting from these simulations can be reduced by modern methods of sensitivity analysis. Especially in water management projects often several goals need to be achieved at the same time which can only be solved using intelligent multicriterial optimization algorithms. Based on existing source codes a scalable simulation software will be developed, using modern software algorithms like efficient parallel equation solvers and database structures capable of handling large numerical datasets, and by utilizing massive parallel computer hardware. The work schedule comprises seven tasks:
- direct software coupling and management of four individual components
- data and project management with database structures
- acceleration of simulations by using HPC
- integration of conceptional object-oriented modelling elements
- data input and output by software coupling to GIS
- development of a sensitivity module for calibration
- development of a multicriterial optimizer for parameter identification