Creating AIDV Files - Analyte Data Measured over Intervals

Begin by selecting the Tools tab, and select Generate AIDV File.

Let's browse to the folder shown and select the file fuel-storage-gw.xlsx

You'll need to select the appropriate table in the file. Some may have several, this one has only one named FuelStorage. Once you do, the program will attempt to automatically choose settings for you, but as you can see below, it isn't perfect.

Since Xylene starts with the letter "X", it was chosen as the X Coordinate. This is clearly wrong, however, everything else along the left side is correct. By default, the Data Components list will select whatever is left over. Sometimes this is handy, but often, and in this case it is excessive. This excel table includes water table and bottom of model elevations that we will want for a .GEO file, but not for the AIDV file. So we'll need to make quite a few changes.

It also can't know the correct units for your analytes nor your coordinate units. It is your responsibility to make sure these are correct or change them.

The last thing you MUST do is determine and choose a Max Gap parameter. This parameter takes some understanding to properly determine. I've looked at this excel file in detail and the screen intervals vary from 0.26 to 35.1 meters in length. The Max Gap parameter is the longest length we will allow to be converted into a single point when we convert intervals to points for kriging. I would recommend setting it to 5 for this data file. That means that any interval less than 5 meters will be represented by a single point at the center of the interval. Intervals longer than 5 meters will be represented by two or more points. Choosing a value too small will create oversampling along the Z direction and too large can result in plumes which become disconnected in Z. Fortunately there tends to be a large range of reasonable values. For this dataset, I expect that good results can be obtained with values ranging from 1 to 12.

With all of our settings correct as shown above, all we need to do is click the Generate AIDV File button, and let's call the file btx.aidv.

NOTE: I also want to point out the option "Empty Cells are Non-Detects". In general this toggle should be off. Normally empty cells are interpreted as being Not-Measured. It is rare that an empty cell should be a non-detect, which also means that you have no information about detection limits.

Our last two tasks will be to take a look at the file in a text editor and confirm that it works in Earth Volumetric Studio.

Although Windows comes with Notepad, it is really a very poor text editor since it lacks line numbers, column numbers, and the ability to handle large files. There are many freeware text editors, but the one we like is Notepad++.