A tomographic approach to identify hydraulic conductivity of a phreatic aquifer with the “differential system method”

The hydraulic conductivity of a phreatic aquifer, under the Dupuit assumption, can be determined by solving an inverse problem. If two stationary sets of data (heads and source terms) corresponding to different flow situations are available, the inverse problem can be solved with a simple modification of the differential system method. Numerical tests show the effectiveness of this method as well as the excellent results that can be obtained by applying it to multiple sets of stationary data; in this case different couples of sets of data can be used to identify conductivities in different subdomains.