The H.A.P.P.I.E. program (Hazard of Aquifer Pollution Potential Impact Evaluation) provides a conservative answer to the problem of determining risk levels in emergency conditions, which means that areas where illegal waste disposal sites, overflows and ruptures of impermeable sheeting are present and where water withdrawal should be discontinued can be identified.

H.A.P.P.I.E. in fact offers a conservative response to the problem of the determination of the environmental impact in critical conditions that can usually be correlated to the requirements of defining areas in which the supply operations should be interrupted in emergency conditions, therefore in very short times and without the possibility of obtaining an accurate collection of the hydrogeological data.

A scoring system is used, derived from H. Le Grand's method, that gives an immediate evaluation of the risk through a limited number of easily determined parameters (depth of water table, gradient, lithology of the unsaturated zone, permeability, distance), on the basis of which the various levels of concentric risk zones around the danger point are determined.

The program is simple to use and requires three data insertion stages: the first relative to the positioning of the waste disposal sites on the available maps, the second relative to the definition of the geometric and geohydrological characteristics of the site and the third relative to the positioning of the wells around the waste disposal sites.

The next step is that of elaboration of the graphic outputs in which the geometry of the areas at risk are determined and which the program then superimposes onto the position of the wells so as to be able to immediately verify which of these are subject to potentially contaminating risk conditions.

EXAMPLES OF GRAPHIC OUTPUTS

Here are some examples of program-generated graphic outputs:

• Example of low risk discharge;
• Example of medium risk discharge