Assessment of the groundwater salinity monitoring network of the Tehran region: application of the discrete entropy theory.

In this paper, a new entropy-based approach is developed for assessing the location of salinity monitoring stations in the Tehran Aquifer, Tehran, Iran. To find the optimal distance among stations, the measure of Transinformation in the Entropy Theory is used. Then a Transinformation-Distance (T-D) curve is developed and used in a multi-objective GA-based optimization model, which provides the best locations for monitoring stations. Because of the large area of the Tehran aquifer and significant spatial variations of the Electrical Conductivity (EC) of the groundwater in the study area, the C-means clustering method is used to classify the study area to some homogenous zones. The optimization model is applied to each zone to find the optimal location of monitoring stations. The results show the applicability and the efficiency of the model in assessing the groundwater monitoring systems. Copyright IWA Publishing 2008.