DynSus: Dynamic sustainability assessment in groundwater remediation practice

Area of Science:

• Environmental Science and Engineering
• Risk Assessment
• Sustainable Remediation

Background:

• Site remediation decision-making is complex, uncertain, and influenced by multiple factors.
• Variability in hydrological, biogeochemical, and socio-economic impacts necessitates dynamic frameworks for sustainable remediation.
• Existing models often lack integrated sustainability assessment and uncertainty handling.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present DynSus, a decision support system for sustainable remediation of contaminated sites.
• To integrate contaminant fate and transport modeling with sustainability assessment within a system dynamics framework.
• To enable scenario analysis and uncertainty handling for evaluating remediation strategies.

Main Methods:

• Developed and implemented the DynSus decision support system using system dynamics.
• Integrated a pre-developed contaminant fate and transport model with a sustainability assessment tool.
• Applied DynSus to a pentachlorophenol (PCP) contaminated site in Sweden, using statistical tools (clustering, genetic algorithms) for data assessment.

Main Results:

• DynSus facilitated comparison of alternative remediation strategies based on sustainability indicators and performance.
• Simulation results showed active practices (bioremediation) are more sustainable long-term than passive ones (monitored natural attenuation).
• Identified critical variables for selecting sustainable remediation solutions and validated the analytical framework of the contaminant transport model.

Conclusions:

• DynSus effectively supports the evaluation of complex, multidimensional remediation problems for life cycle sustainability.
• The system enables site managers to assess various scenarios more quickly and effectively.
• Active remediation strategies demonstrate superior long-term sustainability compared to passive approaches.