Simulated contaminant plume in the F-Area at the Savannah River Site, showing the seepage basins and the engineered subsurface barriers using Amanzi-ATS advanced meshing capabilities. Credit: Zexuan Xu (LBNL) and Rao Garimella (LANL)
Berkeley Lab’s experts contributed to developing seven technologies that were recognized with R&D100 awards this week. One R&D100 award, announced Wednesday by parent company WTWH Media LLC, is for a simulator co-developed by EESA researchers: Amanzi-ATS.
For more than 50 years, the annual R&D 100 Awards have recognized 100 technologies of the past year deemed most innovative and disruptive by an independent panel of judges. The full list of winners, announced by parent company WTWH Media LLC is available at the R&D World website. Information about all Berkeley Lab honorees is available here.
Amanzi–ATS: Modeling Environmental Systems Across Scales
Scientists use computer simulations to predict the impact of wildfires on water quality, or to monitor cleanup at nuclear waste remediation sites by portraying fluid flow across Earth compartments. The Amanzi-Advanced Terrestrial Simulator (ATS) enables them to replicate or couple multiple complex and integrated physical processes controlling these flowpaths, making it possible to capture the essential physics of the problem at hand.
“Specific problems require taking an individual approach to simulations,” said Sergi Molins, principal investigator at Berkeley Lab, which contributed expertise in geochemical modeling to the software’s development. “Physical processes controlling how mountainous watersheds respond to disturbances such as climate- and land-use change, extreme weather, and wildfire are far different than the physical processes at play when an unexpected storm suddenly impacts groundwater contaminant levels in and around a nuclear remediation site. Amanzi-ATS allows scientists to make sense of these interactions in each individual scenario.”
The code is open-source and capable of being run on systems ranging from a laptop to a supercomputer. Led by Los Alamos National Laboratory, Amanzi-ATS is jointly developed by researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Berkeley Lab researchers including Sergi Molins, Marcus Day, Carl Steefel, and Zexuan Xu.