Stochastic hydrogeology's biggest hurdles analyzed and its big blind spot

Rubin, Yoram; Chang, Ching-Fu; Chen, Jiancong; Cucchi, Karina; Harken, Bradley; Heße, Falk; Savoy, Heather

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-5675-2018

Articles | Volume 22, issue 11

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-5675-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-5675-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 22, issue 11

Research article

|

02 Nov 2018

Research article |

| 02 Nov 2018

Stochastic hydrogeology's biggest hurdles analyzed and its big blind spot

Yoram Rubin, Ching-Fu Chang, Jiancong Chen, Karina Cucchi, Bradley Harken, Falk Heße, and Heather Savoy

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Final revised paper (published on 02 Nov 2018)
Preprint (discussion started on 14 Jun 2018)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC1: 'Nice editorial manuscript about the prospects of stochastic hydrogeology', Anonymous Referee #1, 23 Jun 2018
- AC1: 'Response to RC1', Yoram Rubin, 10 Sep 2018
RC2: 'On the impediments to the adoption of stochastic methods in hydrogeology', Anonymous Referee #2, 23 Aug 2018
- AC2: 'Response to RC2', Yoram Rubin, 10 Sep 2018

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Publish as is (30 Sep 2018) by Bill X. Hu

Short summary

This paper addresses questions related to the adoption of stochastic methods in hydrogeology, looking at factors such as environmental regulations, financial incentives, higher education, and the collective feedback loop involving these factors. We show that stochastic hydrogeology's blind spot is in focusing on risk while ignoring uncertainty, to the detriment of its potential clients. The imbalance between the treatments of risk and uncertainty is shown to be common to multiple disciplines.