Drs. Jeremy White and Marsh Lavenue of INTERA have published a review article on the pilot point method (PPM) for model inversion and uncertainty quantification in a special issue of Comptes Rendus Géoscience (2023, Vol. 355, Special Issue SI)—an internationally peer-reviewed electronic journal covering the full range of earth sciences and sustainable development. This special issue was assembled by former students and current friends and colleagues of Professor Ghislain de Marsily to honor his more than 50 years of achievements and contributions to the field of geosciences. Since de Marsily first developed the PPM in 1978, its use has grown significantly in applied decision-support modeling settings including hydrogeology. A technique that was once confined to academic realms, the PPM is now widely accepted as one of the industry pillars of inversion and uncertainty quantification for groundwater modeling. The article by Drs. White and Lavenue, entitled “Advances in the pilot point inverse method: Où En Sommes-Nous maintenant?”, provides an update to de Marsily’s paper entitled “Four Decades of Inverse Problems in Hydrogeology” [De Marsily et al., 2000], with a particular focus on the incredible adoption and advancement of PPM and related inverse techniques over the last 20 years in the field of predictive groundwater modeling. Significant reductions in inversion time are transforming the way in which practitioners are deploying the PPM to improve their understanding of hydrogeologic systems, and, ultimately, to provide decision support for water resource management. The special issue of the publication can be accessed here - https://comptes-rendus.academie-sciences.fr/geoscience/item/CRGEOS_2023__355_S1/ and to learn more about the life of Professor Ghislain de Marsily, a brief biography can be accessed here - https://timecapsule.iah.org/person/ghislain-de-marsily/
