We give an approach for using flow information from a system of wells to characterize hydrologic properties of an aquifer. In particular, we consider experiments where an impulse of tracer fluid is injected along with the water at the input wells and its concentration is recorded over time at the uptake wells. We focus on characterizing the spatially varying permeability field, which is a key attribute of the aquifer for determining flow paths and rates for a given flow experiment. As is standard for estimation from such flow data, we use complicated subsurface flow code that simulates the fluid flow through the aquifer for a particular well configuration and aquifer specification, in particular the permeability field over a grid. The solution to this ill-posed problem requires that some regularity conditions be imposed on the permeability field. Typically, this regularity is accomplished by specifying a stationary Gaussian process model for the permeability field. Here we use an intrinsically stationary ...
['Herbert K. H. Lee', 'David Higdon', 'Zhuoxin Bi', 'Marco A. R. Ferreira', 'Mike West']
Markov Random Field Models for High-Dimensional Parameters in Simulations of Fluid Flow in Porous Media