Application of ensemble H-infinity filter in aquifer characterization and comparison to ensemble Kalman filter

Though the ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) has been successfully applied in many areas, it requires explicit and accurate model and measurement error information, leading to difficulties in practice when only limited information on error mechanisms of observational instruments for subsurface systems is accessible. To handle the uncertain errors, we applied a robust data assimilation algorithm, the ensemble H-infinity filter (EnHF), to estimation of aquifer hydraulic heads and conductivities in a flow model with uncertain/correlated observational errors. The impacts of spatial and temporal correlations in measurements were analyzed, and the performance of EnHF was compared with that of the EnKF. The results show that both EnHF and EnKF are able to estimate hydraulic conductivities properly when observations are free of error; EnHF can provide robust estimates of hydraulic conductivities even when no observational error information is provided. In contrast, the estimates of EnKF seem noticeably undermined because of correlated errors and inaccurate error statistics, and filter divergence was observed. It is concluded that EnHF is an efficient assimilation algorithm when observational errors are unknown or error statistics are inaccurate.