GroMoPo Metadata for Indianapolis Analytic Element model

Overlapping and adjacent ground water investigations are common in areas where aquifers are threatened by industrial development. In the Indianapolis area in Marion County, Indiana, a patchwork of ground water flow models have been used during the past 20 years to evaluate ground water resources and to determine the effects of local contamination. In every case these ground water models were constructed from scratch. Site specific finite difference grids or finite element meshes inhibit the direct reuse of input data when the area of interest shifts. Because the aquifer is not discretized into a grid or mesh with analytic element models, there are unique opportunities for direct reuse of model input data. In two applications of this principle we illustrate how the newly emerging analytic element method allows a fairly straightforward reuse of model input data from previous models in the same general area. In analytic element models of Central Indiana, streams and their tributaries are represented in different resolutions. Input data items of several modeling studies are stored and cataloged on disk in such a manner that they can be selectively retrieved by a data management program PREPRO. In this manner, a new ground water model can be set up quickly with input data which have been previously defined and tested during model calibration.