Cost-effectiveness In Polluted Site Sampling Campaign

Soil pollution is a difficult subject to investigate, cause to problems connected to uncertainty in polluted areas optimal sampling designing and in right conceptual model determining. After a preliminary sensitive investigation, an appropriate step-by-step approach could allow to reach representative results. After a description of the main codified sampling designs, the present paper is supply a sample case study, which could give some rough guidelines for an effective oriented approach to the subject. In literature there are a lot of indications, but few studies on the necessary sample number to reach a fixed confidence level in operative approaches. In such complex problems, in fact, the uncertainty level knowledge during the investigation is fundamental to attribute the correct significance to results. Coming from a probabilistic modelling of different over-threshold areas shape, the herringbone sampling pattern seems to give good indications about sampling design and number, since from a primary approach to the area, thanks to the possibility of percentage error a priori determining. In the sample site, in Southern Italy, only the "analyte" contamination has been considered and, based on a herringbone sampling pattern, has been possible to demonstrate, on a kriged prediction map, that few optimal locations could have been chosen for a preliminary sampling campaign.