• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.29 no.6B
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• pp.551-560
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• 2009

This paper describes a newly developed pollutant transport model named ARPTM which was designed to simulate the transport and characteristics of pollutant materials after an accidental spill in upstream of river system up to a given position in the downstream. In particular, the ARPTM incorporated ADCP data to compute longitudinal dispersion coefficient and advection velocity which are necessary to apply one-dimensional advection-dispersion equation. ARPTM was built on top of the geographic information system platforms to take advantage of the technology's capabilities to track geo-referenced processes and visualize the simulated results in conjunction with associated geographic layers such as digital maps. The ARPTM computes travel distance, time, and concentration of the pollutant cloud in the given flow path from the river network, after quickly finding path between the spill of the pollutant material and any concerned points in the downstream. ARPTM is closely connected with a recently developed GIS-based Arc River database that stores inputs and outputs of ARPTM. ARPTM thereby assembles measurements, modeling, and cyberinfrastructure components to create a useful cyber-tool for determining and visualizing the dynamics of the clouds of pollutants while dispersing in space and time. ARPTM is expected to be potentially used for building warning system for the transport of pollutant materials in a large basin.