Concerns about water resource availability and preservation have grown over recent decades due to increased levels of pollution stemming mainly from economic activities and uncontrolled population growth. In this context, the present study seeks to identify and quantify point pollution sources released from river margins. A two-dimensional transient advection–diffusion equation is proposed to model the physical problem, while the inverse problem, for the identification and quantification of pollution sources, is investigated through the definition of an objective function, considering or not the availability of prior information. The objective function then is minimized by applying the differential evolution algorithm. Simulated cases are presented and discussed for distinct release scenarios, including single and multiple point locations. The results obtained were found to be satisfactory even for the most difficult cases, illustrating that the computational approaches presented in this work may yield valuable tools in the management of surface water resources.

近几十年来，由于主要来自经济活动和不受控制的人口增长造成的污染程度增加，对水资源可用性和保护的担忧日益增加。在这种情况下，本研究旨在识别和量化从河流边缘释放的点污染源。提出了一个二维瞬态平流-扩散方程来模拟物理问题，而通过定义目标函数来研究用于识别和量化污染源的逆问题，考虑或不考虑先验信息的可用性。然后通过应用差分进化算法最小化目标函数。针对不同的发布场景（包括单点和多点位置）提出并讨论了模拟案例。