An Efficient Information Retrieval Method for Brownfield Assessment with Sparse Data*

Abstract

Environmental site investigations are carried out prior to the reclamation of industrially contaminated sites. In this study, an information retrieval approach involving a fuzzy partitioning scheme is proposed to identify the topology of polluted areas in a given industrial site. While its primary objective is to locate contaminated zones accurately with a minimal number of samples, the second target is to reduce the size of the investigation area subjected to re-sampling in the next phase. The performance of the mentioned approach is demonstrated here, using results from real industrially contaminated sites.