Multi-scenario validation of the robust inversion method with biased plume range and values

Abstract

Release rate estimation is a vital means of revealing the emission process of radionuclides and assessing the environmental consequences in an emergency. Inverse modeling is widely used in emergency cases, but is vulnerable to plume biases in atmospheric dispersion modeling. One promising solution is a model called "Simultaneously Estimates the Release rate And Corrects both the plume range and Transport pattern" (SERACT). This study investigates the feasibility and behavior of SERACT based on four wind tunnel experiments replicating complex dispersion scenarios with both dense buildings and heterogeneous topography. SERACT's performance is compared with that of Tikhonov-regularized inversion and its predecessor. The results demonstrate that SERACT successfully corrects the modeled plume biases and simultaneously improves the release rate estimations in all four complex local-scale scenarios. The release rates retrieved by SERACT provide better agreement with the true release rates than those given by the other methods for all scenarios, with an average deviation of only 5.83%. After correction, the simulated plume reproduces the concentrations at all sites and achieves the best Pearson correlation coefficient (1.00) and fraction of simulations within a factor of 2 of the measurements (1.00); these values are 7.33 and 2.09 times higher, respectively, than those of simulations using release rates obtained using Tikhonov-regularized inversion.

Keywords: Atmospheric dispersion model; Diagnostic meteorological model; Plume bias; Source inversion; Wind tunnel experiment.