Increased accuracy of geostatistical prediction of nitrogen dioxide in the United Kingdom with secondary data

Five techniques were used to map nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) concentrations in the United Kingdom. The methods used to predict from point data, collected as part of the UK NO₂ diffusion tube network, were local linear regression (LR), inverse distance weighting (IDW), ordinary kriging (OK), simple kriging with a locally varying mean (SKlm) and kriging with an external drift (KED). These techniques may be divided into two groups: (i) those that use only a single variable in the prediction process (IDW, OK) and (ii) those that make use of additional variables as a part of prediction (LR, SKlm and KED). Nitrous oxides emission data were used as secondary data with LR, SKlm and KED. It was concluded that SKlm provided the most accurate predictions based on the summary statistics of prediction errors from cross-validation.