Los Alamos National Laboratory's risk-based decision analysis for groundwater remediation and monitoring

Contaminant transport models can provide valuable information for decisions regarding environmental management. When coupled with quantitative uncertainty, sensitivity, and economic-worth analyses, contaminant transport models can be used to optimize overall performance of an environmental management system. This paper describes a risk-informed decision process developed and applied at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, USA, to optimize the management of groundwater-protection program resources. A separate publication (Vesselinov & Birdsell, 2005) describes the groundwater transport model developed to assess uncertainty in this application, while this paper focuses on the decision analysis model developed to manage that uncertainty.