  This paper deals with the numerical approximation of the biharmonic inverse
source problem in an abstract setting in which the measurement data is
finite-dimensional. This unified framework in particular covers the conforming
and nonconforming finite element methods (FEMs). The inverse problem is
analysed through the forward problem. Error estimate for the forward solution
is derived in an abstract set-up that applies to conforming and Morley
nonconforming FEMs. Since the inverse problem is ill-posed, Tikhonov
regularisation is considered to obtain a stable approximate solution. Error
estimate is established for the regularised solution for different
regularisation schemes. Numerical results that confirm the theoretical results
are also presented.
