Approaches to Optimization
of the Monitoring of Groundwater

V. S. Kovalevskii* and S. M. Semenov**

* Water Problems Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, ul. Gubkina 3, Moscow, 117971 Russia

** Institute of Environmental Geoscience, Ulanskii per. 13, Moscow, 101000 Russia

Received January 28, 1998

Abstract—It is shown that the optimization of the groundwater monitoring should take into account various
natural and human-induced conditions and factors affecting the groundwater regime, and their interaction with
different components of the environment, as well as the numerical procedures based on the relations between
the reliability of data and the cost of their acquisition. An optimization criterion in the form of the normalized
difference between the reliability of the data and the cost of their acquisition is proposed.