Sequential data assimilation in geotechnical engineering and its application to seepage analysis

There are many uncertainties in the geotechnical engineering design, which lead to prediction errors and risks in the real world. Sequential data assimilation is one of the most applicable methods to lessen these errors and risks, for partial observations can be obtained online and required computation time in numerical analysis has similar time scale of real geotechnical phenomena. We summarize characteristics of sequential data assimilation from the viewpoint of its application to geotechnical engineering and apply them to a seepage analysis using realistic simulation system. The result shows that application of sequential data assimilation with the particle filter gives a good estimation in seepage analysis.