Building a Contaminant Transport Model in GoldSim

This section briefly outlines the steps required to create a contaminant transport model, and provides a quick tour of each of the GoldSim Contaminant Transport Module elements.

In general, you create a mass transport model of an environmental system within GoldSim in the sequence outlined below:

1. Specify the species to be included in the simulation;

2. Specify the transport and storage media within the environmental system;

3. Specify the transport pathways in the system;

4. Specify the manner in which the transport pathways are inter-connected via mass flux links;

5. Define the contaminant source terms for the system (if any);

6. Define the receptors who may be impacted by contaminants within the system; and

7. Specify the rate and consequences of any disruptive events that may occur.

Note: For all but the most simple models, the most important (and time-consuming) tasks in a contaminant transport modeling project are typically the development of a conceptual model and the quantification of the inputs for the system you are trying to simulate. Although the quantification of many of the inputs can be delayed until after you have represented the system in a numerical tool such as GoldSim, development of the conceptual model must, for the most part, occur beforehand. Development of a conceptual model and quantification of inputs are discussed further in Appendix A of the Contaminant Transport Module User’s Guide.

Each of the seven steps listed above is outlined in the topics below. The intention of these topics is to simply provide a quick overview of these seven steps, and introduce you to each of the Contaminant Transport Module elements