Optimization of environmental additional sampling using spatial simulated annealing in Sepahan-Shahr area.

Optimization of sampling scheme is one of the important and attractive issues for geo statisticians and geochemists. So far, various methods have been presented for optimization of sampling location (initial and additional samples). In this article, it is tried to optimize the location of additionalsampling in environmental studies of Sepahan-Shahr area, by simulated annealing method. In Sepahan-shahr area, adjacency to pollutant factor (Irankooh mining area), in addition to the winds blowing whole the year from the side of this mine; have increased the pollution potentiality of the area. In this article, it is tried to optimize the location of additional sampling on the basis of the data obtained from initial samplings. For this purpose, objective function has been defined as “estimation variance minimization”, and simulated annealing optimization method has been used for solving this optimization problem. All the codes related with computation of objective function are prepared by Matlab software. Additional sampling proposed by this method will result in reduction of average estimationvariance of the area from 0.34 to 0.22, which is the highest reduction of estimated uncertainty possible to make in the results of 20 additional samples.