Principle of maximum entropy in the estimation of suspended sediment concentration

ABSTRACT The concern with water quality has been promoting development of better monitoring and control techniques every day. As sediments transport most of water contaminants, their study is fundamental. Given the large number of variables for estimating sediment concentration and high costs of monitoring campaigns, it becomes necessary to develop more accessible methods which bring satisfactory practical results. Therefore, this work deals with application of the principle of maximum entropy, a probabilistic method to determine concentration of sediments in river channels with various concentrations and particle sizes. For this purpose, it was proposed a relationship between the theory of entropy parameters in order to reduce the computational effort. The results were satisfactory at concentrations above 10 g/L with R2 greater than 0.88. The calculated squared errors in this study were lower than those found when using the theory of entropy by Tsallis and the equation of Rouse, classic models for determining the sediment concentration profile. The applicability of the proposed model and the ease of using the probabilistic method, since it reduces the amount of data needed to perform the estimate, makes it feasible on a global scale.