Comment 1

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Last updated on Fri 07 Feb 1997 at 02:20 PM

The following message is from Gregory J Ruskauff. I neither endorse nor reject his opinion.

Date sent:        Thu, 18 Jul 1996 07:11:44 -0700
From:             Doug Walker 
Organization:     INTERA Inc
To:               rwinsto@lsuvm.sncc.lsu.edu
Subject:          some commercial software

I don't use a commercial version of MODFLOW, but I do use some of the
other software you mention on your page that I have a few opinions on.
PEST in conjunction with Groundwater Vistas and MODFLOW is a very nice
combination.  PEST is about the most flexible implementation of the
Levenberg-Marquardt method I have seen, and coupled with ease of
preparing input files with GV and GV's own calibration assessment tools
makes calibrating MODFLOW models more efficient than ever.  PEST is
missing some diagnostic statistics that I think it should include (e.g.
sensitivity coefficients), but I have written the author and they are
likely to be included in the next version.  Unlike MODFLOWP any model
parameter can be estimated (heads, boundary conductances, etc.), and
unlike MODFLOWP the documentation is actually comprehensible and the
code does a good job of diagnosing problems itself.

Because it is model independent I anticipate using PEST extensively in
the future with SWIFT II, TOUGH2 (even though ITOUGH2 exists), etc.

Finally, a friend and I have modified the BCF3 package to incorporate
variable anisotropy (rather than layer by layer anisotropy) and the code
and documentation has been accepted by GROUNDWATER, and will be available
sometime this Fall (I guess).

gjruskau@dpcmail.dukepower.com