Application of MCLP and LINGO methods to optimal design of groundwater monitoring network in an oil refinery site

Abstract

Groundwater-monitoring network is a set of boreholes (wells) that is used to monitor the water table fluctuation and to detect groundwater contamination. In this research, the maximal covering location problem (MCLP) method is employed to discretize the area, and the LINGO modeling program is used to optimize the number of boreholes. Tabriz oil refinery at the northwest of Iran with high pollution potential that imposes a serious threat to the beneath multilayered aquifer was chosen to evaluate the feasibility of these techniques in field scale. The location and content of storage tanks, leakage history, groundwater flow direction, contaminated well location and the facilities leakage potential are considered as the weighting factors to calculate the number and location of the optimal wells. As a result of optimization, the initial estimated number of boreholes by the MCLP model for the study area is reduced from 349 to 184. A high density of optimal boreholes is allocated to refining zone and oil storing yard, especially near tanks containing dangerous substances due to their toxicity and potential for contaminating water. A vulnerability zoning map prepared using the analytical hierarchy process method indicates a suitable conformation between locations of the boreholes and the vulnerable areas.