Complexity

It is difficult to define complexity in modeling. Complexity is often associated with uncertainty since modeling uncertainty is an intrinsically difficult task. However, modeling uncertainty does not require, necessarily, complex models, in the sense of a model requiring an unmanageable number of degrees of freedom to characterize the aquifer. The relationship between complexity, uncertainty, heterogeneity, and stochastic modeling is not simple. Aquifer models should be able to quantify the uncertainty of their predictions, which can be done using stochastic models that produce heterogeneous realizations of aquifer parameters. This is the type of complexity addressed in this article.