Hosted on 20 April 2022 by the GWD Gauteng Branch Chair Mrs. Oudi Kgomongwe and invited speaker Mr Nico van Zyl, this CPD webinar invited all members of the GWD and as well as planners, decision makers, water resource managers, researchers, private sector organisations, dewatering hydrogeologists, and all stakeholders who are interested in the use of numerical groundwater modelling as a decision support tool.

Nico van Zyl is a Director at Hydrogeek Consulting (Pty) Ltd and has more than ten years’ experience in the hydrogeological and groundwater modelling fields with clients in the government, private and tertiary sectors. He has worked on projects throughout South Africa, Africa (DRC, Zambia, Mozambique, Ghana and Botswana) and internationally in countries (Argentina, UAE, Peru, Australia, US and Germany).

He shared with us:

"As a modeler -what is my job? To simulate what happens under the ground? Or to allow people to manage what happens under the ground in a way that prevents bad things from happening. No one can simulate what happens under the ground, but there is hope we can assimilate data and allow the flow of information to quantify uncertainty. Model-based decision-support may therefore require construction, history-matching and deployment of a number of models, each addressing different aspects of system management. Modelling is always a means; it is never an end. “Simulating a system” is not a valid end."

 

Q&A:

 

TALK RESOURCES:

- View the Talk Invite

- View the Recording of this Talk on the GWD YouTube Channel: https://youtu.be/01TusxhLliQ

- Document shared during Talk by Dr Rui Hugman : Moore, C., and J. Doherty (2005), Role of the calibration process in reducing model predictive error, Water Resour. Res., 41, W05020, doi:10.1029/2004WR003501.

- https://gmdsi.org/blog/discussions-with-regulators/

 

INTERESTING STATS: