In the context of the increasing use of the subsurface, both in terms of the exploitation and protection of underground resources and the storage of toxic elements, the development of modeling tools is necessary for the characterization of the subsurface and the understanding of the processes occurring in. This includes (i) the extraction of information from laboratory and field data collected with various characterization methods and (ii) the implementation of predictive models for providing exploitation, pollution, and remediation scenarios. Focusing on highly heterogeneous systems such as fractured or karstic domains, requires to consider structural properties and processes that are challenging in terms of mathematical conceptualization and numerical resources. The processes considered range from electrical current propagation for the interpretation of geophysical data to heat transfer for geothermal characterization and optimization, including the transport of reactive solutes at several scales.
In collaboration with mathematicians, geophysicists, hydrogeologists and geochemists, the main objectives are to (i) make the link between laboratory- and field-scale data, and the associated numerical models, and (ii) provide predictive and inversion modeling tools able to tackle the well-known challenges of scale change, structural heterogeneities, and uncertainties of the natural environment.
