Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

PhDTalks | Formulation and probabilistic assessment of Diclofenac fate in a soilwater system under uncertainty

We are glad to announce that our next PhDTalks Seminar will be held on Tuesday 20th Semptember in Aula Magna, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci, 42, from 5:30 pm to 7:15 pm CET.

PhDTalks is a series of seminars and discussions between PhD students. The events are aimed at providing a place to network and get in contact with many of the projects developed in our department.

Speaker Laura Ceresa will talk about “Formulation and probabilistic assessment of Diclofenac fate in a soilwater system under uncertainty”.

Abstract: 

Drinking water resources are threatened by several contaminants. Among these, Diclofenac (Dcf) poses major concerns due to its persistent and bioactive nature. Developing predictive tools to interpret its fate is then key to drive environmental protection actions. The modeling framework presented in this PhD talk is based on conceptualizing the molecular dynamics of Dcf biodegradation in a selected soil-water system. The geochemical model is subject to stochastic calibration through Acceptance-Rejection Sampling. The associated results fully embed uncertainty quantification and show that data scarcity and/or redundant model parametrization might deteriorate the quality of some parameter estimates. The issue is addressed by reducing the complexity of the model. The resulting formulations are framed within a multi-model context where the performance of each (re-calibrated) candidate model is assessed (in a relative sense) through the Kashyap identification criterion. The results suggest that an optimal trade-off in terms of model complexity (i.e., level of parametrization) given data availability can be assessed to satisfactorily interpret the system dynamics. 

You can watch the event online by clicking here.

At the end of each event a small refreshment funded by the department will be available.

If you are interested in presenting during one of these events, please send an email to chiara.recalcati@polimi.it