An Exploration of Particle Filtering Techniques to Determine Aquifer Properties From Groundwater

Well Data Influenced by Tidal Forcing

Jose Kolb-Lugo*, O. Patrick Kreidl# & Christopher J. Brown**

* Undergraduate civil engineering student and lead author, University of North Florida

# Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering, University of North Florida

** Associate Professor of Civil Engineering, University of North Florida

Consider the problem of determining aquifer parameters from groundwater well data with
embedded tidal signatures, which in coastal regions offers a low-cost alternative to the more
typical approach of boring pumping wells to acquire drawdown data. Estimating key aquifer
parameters such as the aquifer storage coefficient and transmissivity using such data depends on
models that are nonlinear in the unknown parameters, which challenges traditional techniques. A
recent study, using drawdown data for a confined aquifer, reports success with a contemporary
signal processing technique called particle filtering. This paper adapts the technique to
estimate confined aquifer parameters using near-field well data with tidal signatures. It presents
(i) a review of the general particle filtering technique, including other studies of its applications
in geoscience, (ii) the previously derived diffusion models of groundwater response
that specialize the particle filter to estimate parameters using tidal data, (iii)
results of the approach on previously published tidal data from a case study in China and (iv)
some shortcomings of the approach as well as opportunities for future research.