Evaluation and validation of vulnerability concepts using a physically based approach

Starting from the observation that lacks and drawbacks of existing vulnerability methods are strongly related to the fuzzy and ambiguous definitions on which these concepts rely, a more physical point of view of the concept of vulnerability is pro-posed. An applied definition is derived from what actually underlines the concept of groundwater pollution. For intrinsic vulner-ability, three factors describing a pollution by a conservative contaminant are defined : contaminant transfer time, contamination duration and level of concentration reached by the contaminant. These factors are schematically put into a three-dimensional diagram, called the vulnerability cube, which can be used to assess or validate the vulnerability of any point within a given catchment.