AQUAGRID: A Problem Solving Platform for Contaminated Groundwater (A case Study in a Mining Area in Sardinia) Luca Fanfani a) , Riccardo Biddau a) , Giuditta Lecca b) , Fabrizio Murgia b) a) Department of Earth Science (DISTER) - University of Cagliari- Via Trentino, 51 - 09127 Cagliari (Italy) email: lfanfani@unica.it; r.biddau@gmail.it b) CRS4, Energy & Environment Program - Technological Park "Sardegna Ricerche" Piscina Manna, 09010, Cagliari (Italy ) email: giuditta@crs4.it; fmurgia@crs4.it Abstract The paper describes the benefits of Grid technology to facilitate the access to distributed data, their processing and visualization in geosciences, by means of the AQUAGRID application. AQUAGRID is the subsurface hydrology service of the Sardinian GRIDA3 infrastructure, designed to deploy complex environmental applications via a user-friendly Web portal. The chief objective of the GRIDA3 project in the fields of spatial planning and environmental protection is to develop a distributed data infrastructure along with a Grid based decision support system, integrating GIS technologies, monitoring services and mathematical models for environmental simulation, optimization, analysis, and risk evaluation. The AQUAGRID service is oriented towards the needs of water professionals providing them a flexible and powerful tool to solve water resources management problems and aid decision between different remediation options for contaminated soil and groundwater. The problem solving capability of the platform is demonstrated with application to the pilot site of the Fluminese-Iglesiente mining district (South-Western Sardinia, Italy). Key words: Grid infrastructure, mine contamination, geochemical modeling services, Web applications. Introduction The extent and the complexity of environmental problems and their consequences on the ecosystem, human health and economic development make necessary an integrated, multi-disciplinary approach to support the management of natural resources, and increase the technical knowledge and public awareness. For these reasons, earth and environmental sciences are uniquely positioned today to uptake advanced technological platforms, based on the collaborative potential of the Web and Grid paradigms. The Grid is a form of distributed computing developed by scientific communities since the early nineties, to solve very large problems requiring huge computation and storage resources. It is based on the dynamic sharing of existing resources to create a virtual system, which can be accessed by anybody from anywhere. Middleware tools provide secure and seamless access to distributed computational resources, data catalogues, archives, software libraries and scientific instruments. A number of Grids exist in the world today and the number is growing steadily (DEGREE consortium 2007). The GRIDA3 portal (http://grida3.crs4.it ), funded by a three-year project of the Italian Research Ministry, is designed to provide an advanced problem-solving platform for the integration of human know-how, simulation software, instrumentation and resources for data communication, storage, visualization, and computation. To cite only a few of the environmental challenges addressed by the project, consider the remediation of industrial polluted sites, the non-rational use of water resources, and the hydrogeological risk related to meteorological extreme events and climate variability. The AQUAGRID application AQUAGRID is the subsurface hydrology service of the GRIDA3 problem solving platform, centered on groudwater modeling and geochemical data analysis and interpretation (Figure 1). AQUAGRID is oriented towards water professionals and decision makers providing them a flexible and powerful tool to solve water resources management problems and aid decision between different remediation options for contaminated groundwater. To accomplish this goal, AQUAGRID is an open system based both on in-house developed (CODESA-3D, Lecca et al 2007) and open source (PEST http://www.sspa.com/pest/, HYDRO-GEN http://www.ing.unitn.it/~bellin/frames/hydrogen.php, PHREEQC http://wwwbrr.cr.usgs.gov/projects/GWC_coupled/phreeqc/) software already in place. Other open source modules (e.g.: PostgreSQL database, Web-GIS mapping and statistical analysis