Who Should Use the Contaminant Transport Module?

The GoldSim Contaminant Transport Module is intended for use by engineers, scientists, researchers and students who are interested in understanding and predicting the migration of mass (e.g., contaminants) in environmental systems.

The software itself, although relatively complex, can be mastered by anyone familiar with the basic functions of a personal computer and the Windows operating system. The key requirements for applying the Contaminant Transport Module are a clear understanding of the physical system being modeled and a basic understanding of uncertainty analysis and probability theory:

• Because the software was designed to be extremely flexible, it intentionally imposes few constraints on the inputs that you define. Hence, it is your responsibility to ensure that the system being defined is consistent and realistic. As a result, the most important requirement for applying the program is that you have a clear understanding of the features, processes, and events controlling the behavior of the system to be modeled. This should include a good understanding of the fundamentals of contaminant transport modeling.

• Although GoldSim can be run in a deterministic manner (i.e., no specified uncertainty in input parameters), one of the key features of GoldSim is its ability to explicitly represent such uncertainty through the use of probability distributions. In order to do so, the user must have at least a basic understanding of the representation and propagation of uncertainty. Appendix A of the GoldSim User's Guide provides a brief primer on this topic, along with suggestions for further reading.