Monica Riva, professor at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the Politecnico di Milano (Polimi, Italy), will give the Anneliese Niethammer Lecture of the winter semester 2023 on 10 February.
Speaker: Prof. Dr. Monica Riva, Politecnico di Milano (Polimi, Italy)
Title: "Multiple Metrics for Sensitivity Analysis: Can they be useful to guide efforts engaged in complex subsurface systems studies?"
Date: Friday, 10 February 2023
Time: 11:00 am CET
Place: MML, Pfaffenwaldring 61, 70569 Stuttgart, Campus Vaihingen of the University of Stuttgart
Registration: we kindly ask for prior registration via e-mail >>> melanie.lipp@iws.uni-stuttgart.de
Abstract
Modern models of environmental and industrial systems have reached a high level of complexity, with the aim of capturing the nature of target phenomena and applications. With reference to subsurface systems, these include, e.g., multiphase flow and reactive transport in heterogenous aquifers, riverbank filtration systems efficiency, hydrocarbon production allocation for reservoirs and sustainable use of underground resources. The level of complexity of these models could hamper an unambiguous understanding of their functioning, i.e., the way they drive relationships and dependencies among inputs and outputs of interest. Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA) tools can be employed to examine this issue. In this broad context, emphasis is here devoted to the important aspects related to the way the definition and use of a sensitivity metric is linked to the nature of the question(s) the GSA is meant to address. These aspects are also linked to the use of GSA in designing experimental activities and/or assisting model (stochastic) model calibration.
Research Activity
The research activity of Monica Riva has been focused mainly (about 130 publications, of which more than about 80 on international journals included in the Journal Citation Report) on subsurface flow and transport dynamics, parameter estimation, stochastic groundwater hydrology, probabilistic well capture zones, scaling in hydrology, stochastic inverse modeling, uncertainty quantification, multiphase flows, oil recovery, experimental, analytical and numerical methods, interpretation and modeling of experimental data, groundwater management. One of her main contributions is the development of exact and approximated formalisms for prediction of groundwater flow fields processes governing the spreading of conservative and reactive solutes in hydro-geo-chemically heterogeneous geomaterials by means of conditional moments of the state variable of interest. On the basis of such theoretical framework original analytical and numerical solutions of the investigated processes have been derived. She developed and applied innovative stochastic and upscaling techniques to study multiphase flow features of immiscible and miscible fluids. She has developed a theory (sub-Gaussian models) able to capture the non-Gaussian and scaling behavior exhibited by many hydrological-hydrogeological-environmental variables. She has introduced novel metrics to perform global sensitivity analysis across multiple interpretive models with uncertain parameters. She is a leading scientist of the Groundwater research group of Polimi (DICA). The last peer review (year 2010) has evaluated this group as Excellent at international level.
About the SFB 1313 Anneliese Niethammer Lecture Series
Anneliese Niethammer was the first female professor of the University of Stuttgart in 1947. The lecture series, dedicated to Anneliese Niethammer, is organised by the Collaborative Research Center (SFB) 1313 and takes place once a semester. Renowned international female researchers speak on relevant topics of current research in the research area of porous media.