Improving Coal Quality Estimations with Geostatistics and Geophysical Logs

In most modern coal mines, there are many coal quality parameters that are measured on samples taken from boreholes. These data are used to generate spatial models of the coal quality parameters, typically using inverse distance as an interpolation method. At the same time, downhole geophysical logging of numerous additional boreholes is used to measure various physical properties but no coal quality samples are taken. The work presented in this paper uses two of the most important coal quality variables—ash and volatile matter—and assesses the efficacy of using a number of geostatistical interpolation methods to improve the accuracy of the interpolated models, including the use of auxiliary variables from geophysical logs. A multivariate spatial statistical analysis of ash, volatile matter and several auxiliary variables is used to establish a co-regionalization model that relates all of the variables as manifestations of an underlying geological characteristic. A case study of a coal mine in Queensland, Australia, is used to compare the interpolation methods of inverse distance to ordinary kriging, universal kriging, co-kriging, regression kriging and kriging with an external drift. The relative merits of these six methods are compared using the mean error and the root mean square error as measures of bias and accuracy. The study demonstrates that there is significant opportunity to improve the estimations of coal quality when using kriging with an external drift. The results show that when using the depth of a sample as an external drift variable there is a significant improvement in the accuracy of estimation for volatile matter, and when using wireline density logs as the drift variable there is improvement in the estimation of the in situ ash. The economic benefit of these findings is that cheaper proxies for coal quality parameters can significantly increase data density and the quality of estimations.

     

喀斯特地区春季土壤水分空间插值方法对比

以杨眉河小流域为研究区,通过土壤水分采样,选取辅助变量,采用普通克里金、协同克里金、回归克里金3种地统计学方法对土壤水分数据进行空间插值。结果表明：1）回归克里金对研究区土壤水分估算误差最小,其次为协克里金,普通克里金的误差最大;2）普通克里金生成的土壤水分表面最为平滑,而回归克里金最大程度反映了研究区实际的土壤水分空间变化;3）对于协同克里金,以湿度指数（WI）样点数据作为辅助变量的估算误差小于将WI栅格数据作为辅助变量的估算误差。总之,在可获得有效辅助变量的条件下,回归克里金对研究区土壤水分估算的效果优于协同克里金与普通克里金。     

SRTM resample with short distance‐low nugget kriging

The shuttle radar topography mission (SRTM), was flow on the space shuttle Endeavour in February 2000, with the objective of acquiring a digital elevation model of all land between 60° north latitude and 56° south latitude, using interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) techniques. The SRTM data are distributed at horizontal resolution of 1 arc‐second (～30 m) for areas within the USA and at 3 arc‐second (～90 m) resolution for the rest of the world. A resolution of 90 m can be considered suitable for the small or medium‐scale analysis, but it is too coarse for more detailed purposes. One alternative is to interpolate the SRTM data at a finer resolution; it will not increase the level of detail of the original digital elevation model (DEM), but it will lead to a surface where there is the coherence of angular properties (i.e. slope, aspect) between neighbouring pixels, which is an important characteristic when dealing with terrain analysis. This work intents to show how the proper adjustment of variogram and kriging parameters, namely the nugget effect and the maximum distance within which values are used in interpolation, can be set to achieve quality results on resampling SRTM data from 3” to 1”. We present for a test area in western USA, which includes different adjustment schemes (changes in nugget effect value and in the interpolation radius) and comparisons with the original 1” model of the area, with the national elevation dataset (NED) DEMs, and with other interpolation methods (splines and inverse distance weighted (IDW)). The basic concepts for using kriging to resample terrain data are: (i) working only with the immediate neighbourhood of the predicted point, due to the high spatial correlation of the topographic surface and omnidirectional behaviour of variogram in short distances; (ii) adding a very small random variation to the coordinates of the points prior to interpolation, to avoid punctual artifacts generated by predicted points with the same location than original data points and; (iii) using a small value of nugget effect, to avoid smoothing that can obliterate terrain features. Drainages derived from the surfaces interpolated by kriging and by splines have a good agreement with streams derived from the 1” NED, with correct identification of watersheds, even though a few differences occur in the positions of some rivers in flat areas. Although the 1” surfaces resampled by kriging and splines are very similar, we consider the results produced by kriging as superior, since the spline‐interpolated surface still presented some noise and linear artifacts, which were removed by kriging.     

Climate spatial variability and data resolution in a semi-arid watershed, south-eastern Arizona

In the 10,000 km² San Pedro River watershed area in south-eastern Arizona, high-resolution spatial patterns of long-term precipitation and temperature were better reproduced by kriging climate data with elevation as external drift (KED) than by multiple linear regression on station location and elevation as judged by the spatial distribution of interpolation error. Mean errors were similar overall, and interpolation accuracy for both methods increased with increasing correlation between climate variables and elevation. Uncertainty in station locations had negligible effect on mean estimation error, although error for individual stations varied as much as 27%. Our future ability to examine spatial aspects of climate change at high spatial resolution will be severely limited by continuing closures of climate stations in this part of the United States.     

不同时间尺度、季节的气温数据空间平稳特征及其对插值结果的影响

不同时间尺度、季节的气温数据表现出不同的空间平稳特征。为探讨分析空间平稳性对气温插值的影响规律,采用趋势线法对气温数据进行空间平稳性探索,并对比分析不同空间平稳性条件下,普通线性回归、普通克里格、回归克里格的气温插值精度及插值结果的空间分布特点。结果显示：冬季日均、月均气温与年均气温呈现空间非平稳,插值精度随时间序列的增长而提高,随着气温数据逐渐趋于稳定,精度提高的幅度逐渐下降;夏季日均、月均气温呈现空间平稳,随时间序列的增长,插值精度的提高并不显著;夏季日均气温各插值方法的插值精度普遍高于冬季日均气温。与普通克里格相比,回归克里格能有效提高空间非平稳数据的插值精度。时间序列的增长削弱了不同插值算法之间的插值精度差异和插值结果空间分布差异。     

空间软数据及其插值方法研究进展

由于对地观测技术的迅速发展,空间数据的种类和数量增长迅猛,由空间数据反演得到的各种信息日趋膨胀,这些反演结果中的信息不少以软数据的形式出现。在实际应用中,这些软数据往往与空间插值的目标变量具有一定的相关性,甚至成为控制目标变量空间分布特征的重要因素。然而,由于这些数据通常表示为非数值形式,在计算和处理上存在着一定困难,以致被传统的插值方法所忽视,从而造成信息浪费。近来出现的空间软插值方法是一种利用空间软数据作为辅助信息并以改善插值效果的方法,能够较好的处理并利用软数据所隐含的信息,具有较好的应用发展前景。本文根据空间软数据的特点及其分类,系统综述了空间软插值方法及其应用领域。首先分析了空间数据软硬性质的根本区别,论述了软数据的分类和“硬化”方法,然后介绍空间插值模型中对空间软数据的集成方法和原理,最后对空间软插值方法及其应用研究领域进行了展望。     

Influence of survey strategy and interpolation model on DEM quality

Accurate characterisation of morphology is critical to many studies in the field of geomorphology, particularly those dealing with changes over time. Digital elevation models (DEMs) are commonly used to represent morphology in three dimensions. The quality of the DEM is largely a function of the accuracy of individual survey points, field survey strategy, and the method of interpolation. Recommendations concerning field survey strategy and appropriate methods of interpolation are currently lacking. Furthermore, the majority of studies to date consider error to be uniform across a surface. This study quantifies survey strategy and interpolation error for a gravel bar on the River Nent, Blagill, Cumbria, UK. Five sampling strategies were compared: (i) cross section; (ii) bar outline only; (iii) bar and chute outline; (iv) bar and chute outline with spot heights; and (v) aerial LiDAR equivalent, derived from degraded terrestrial laser scan (TLS) data. Digital Elevation Models were then produced using five different common interpolation algorithms. Each resultant DEM was differentiated from a terrestrial laser scan of the gravel bar surface in order to define the spatial distribution of vertical and volumetric error. Overall triangulation with linear interpolation (TIN) or point kriging appeared to provide the best interpolators for the bar surface. Lowest error on average was found for the simulated aerial LiDAR survey strategy, regardless of interpolation technique. However, comparably low errors were also found for the bar-chute-spot sampling strategy when TINs or point kriging was used as the interpolator. The magnitude of the errors between survey strategy exceeded those found between interpolation technique for a specific survey strategy. Strong relationships between local surface topographic variation (as defined by the standard deviation of vertical elevations in a 0.2-m diameter moving window), and DEM errors were also found, with much greater errors found at slope breaks such as bank edges. A series of curves are presented that demonstrate these relationships for each interpolation and survey strategy. The simulated aerial LiDAR data set displayed the lowest errors across the flatter surfaces; however, sharp slope breaks are better modelled by the morphologically based survey strategy. The curves presented have general application to spatially distributed data of river beds and may be applied to standard deviation grids to predict spatial error within a surface, depending upon sampling strategy and interpolation algorithm.     

Application of Kriging Interpolation for Glacier Mass Balance Computations

In order to compute the specific mass balance of a glacier, point measurements of mass balance need to be integrated and thus interpolated over the entire glacier. In this study kriging was applied as interpolation technique to mass balance data of Storglaciren, a 3 km² valley glacier, focusing on the sensitivity of results to the choice of some kriging parameters. Although the spatial means varied only little in most cases, the spatial distribution of the mass balance quantities was sensitive to the assumption on kriging parameters, suggesting that the kriging parameters need to be carefully optimized for each case if the spatial distribution is of interest.     

A treatise on the use of geostatistics for the characterization of nonrenewable resources

Five decades of geostatistical development are reviewed to summarize the state of the art for spatial interpolation vis-à-vis kriging or a form thereof. Although a search of the literature reveals a variety of kriging methods, there are but two infrastructures for geostatistical interpolation: simple cokriging, for estimating a single variable using two variables, and generalized cokriging, for estimating one or more variables using the same number of variables that are estimated. The many forms of kriging are varieties of these two interpolation infrastructures. This notion is emphasized to aid the selection of an appropriate interpolation model for a nonrenewable resource. These models are discussed, and literature for the models and for applicable software is cited. Additionally, all aspects of spatial interpolation are discussed, including the adequacy of spatial sampling, distribution characteristics of spatial samples, semivariograms, search parameters, and selection of interpolation models in conformance with spatial data characteristics. Finally, the relationship between interpolation and raster-based geographic information systems is emphasized.     

Error propagation in cartographic modelling using Boolean logic and continuous classification

Abstract

When data on environmental attributes such as those of soil or groundwater are manipulated by logical cartographic modelling, the results are usually assumed to be exact. However, in reality the results will be in error because the values of input attributes cannot be determined exactly. This paper analyses how errors in such values propagate through Boolean and continuous modelling, involving the intersection of several maps. The error analysis is carried out using Monte Carlo methods on data interpolated by block kriging to a regular grid which yields predictions and prediction error standard deviations of attribute values for each pixel. The theory is illustrated by a case study concerning the selection of areas of medium textured, non-saline soil at an experimental farm in Alberta, Canada. The results suggest that Boolean methods of sieve mapping are much more prone to error propagation than the more robust continuous equivalents. More study of the effects of errors and of the choice of attribute classes and of class parameters on error propagation is recommended.     

Spatial interpolation of marine environment data using P-MSN

ABSTRACT

When a marine study area is large, the environmental variables often present spatially stratified non-homogeneity, violating the spatial second-order stationary assumption. The stratified non-homogeneous surface can be divided into several stationary strata with different means or variances, but still with close relationships between neighboring strata. To give the best linear-unbiased estimator for those environmental variables, an interpolated version of the mean of the surface with stratified non-homogeneity (MSN) method called point mean of the surface with stratified non-homogeneity (P-MSN) was derived. P-MSN distinguishes the spatial mean and variogram in different strata and borrows information from neighboring strata to improve the interpolation precision near the strata boundary. This paper also introduces the implementation of this method, and its performance is demonstrated in two case studies, one using ocean color remote sensing data, and the other using marine environment monitoring data. The predictions of P-MSN were compared with ordinary kriging, stratified kriging, kriging with an external drift, and empirical Bayesian kriging, the most frequently used methods that can handle some extent of spatial non-homogeneity. The results illustrated that for spatially stratified non-homogeneous environmental variables, P-MSN outperforms other methods by simultaneously improving interpolation precision and avoiding artificially abrupt changes along the strata boundaries.     

薄板光顺样条插值与中国气候空间模拟

利用720个气象台网的长期平均气象数据拟合具有三维地理空间的气候曲面,并与1km空间分辨率的数字高程模型相结合,对气候变量的规则栅格进行插值估计。对各月平均最低温度、平均最高温度和降水量的插值结果构成了基础数字气候空间,以满足地理信息系统的数据分析需求。插值过程提供的误差统计表明插值的温度误差普遍小于0.6度,降水误差范围在8%~15%,明显优于其它插值方法。样条法利用线性模型反映地形对气候的影响,并提供了简便的误差诊断程序,具有良好的实用性。     

小区域癌症数据典型空间插值方法比较研究

癌症已成为危害全球居民健康的重大民生问题,选取合适的空间插值方法分析小区域癌症数据的空间特征可对区域性癌症防控工作的有效开展提供依据。本研究以湖南省苏仙区2012和2016年以村为单位的肺癌死亡率数据为研究对象,以平均误差和均方根误差为评价指标,对反距离加权（IDW）、普通克里金（OK）、趋势面分析（TSA）、多元线性回归（MLR）与协同克里金（CK）五种典型空间插值方法进行精度效果对比及参数优选,并结合不同插值方法的优缺点,确定癌症数据的最优插值方法。结果表明：插值精度方面,CK法的均方根误差最小、插值精度最高,OK、IDW（幂值=1）和MLR次之,TSA（阶数=5）最低;插值效果方面,五种插值方法的实测值和预测值均显著相关,除CK外,其它四种方法均对死亡率低估程度较大,CK和OK插值结果的空间分布效果更好。同时考虑空间因素和影响因子的CK方法是小区域苏仙区2012年、2016年肺癌死亡率最优插值方法,应用该方法可对区域性癌症防控工作的有效开展提供最优的技术支撑。本论文的研究思路也可为小区域癌症数据空间插值方法及参数优选提供参考。     

Comparison Between Kriging Variance and Interpolation Variance as Uncertainty Measurements in the Capanema Iron Mine, State of Minas Gerais—Brazil

The Capanema Mine, an iron ore deposit, is located in the central portion of the Quadrilátero Ferrífero, State of Minas Gerais, southeastern Brazil. Mine development data from approximately 7000 drillholes were used for a comparative study between kriging variance and interpolation variance as uncertainty measurements associated with ordinary kriging estimates. As known, the traditional kriging variance does not depend on local data and, therefore, does not measure the actual dispersion of data. On the other hand, the interpolation variance measures adequately the local dispersion of data used for an ordinary kriging estimate. This paper presents an application of the concept of interpolation variance for measuring uncertainties associated with ordinary kriging estimates of Fe and silica grades. These data were selected for their distinct statistical characteristics with Fe presenting a negatively skewed distribution and, consequently, a low dispersion, and silica a positively skewed distribution and, therefore, a high variability. Comparative studies between the two uncertainty measurements associated with ordinary kriging estimates of Fe and silica proved the superiority of the interpolation variance as a reliable and precise alternative to the kriging variance.     

Evaluation of Diverse Geometric and Geostatistical Estimation Methods Applied to Annual Precipitation in Asturias (NW Spain)

Several alternative estimation and interpolation methods for making annual precipitation maps of Asturias are analysed. The data series in this study corresponds to the year 2003. There exists an evident relationship between precipitation and altitude, with a high correlation coefficient of 0.70, that reflects the hillside effect; that is, the increase in the amount of precipitation in more mountainous areas. The direct spatial variability of precipitation and of altitude and the cross variability of precipitation–altitude are defined by two exponential variogram models: one with a short-range structure (15–30 km) that reflects the control exerted by the lesser, local mountain ranges over the amount of precipitation; and another with a long-range structure (80 km) that supposes the influence over precipitation of the major mountainous alignments of the inland areas of the Cantabrian Mountain Range (Cordillera Cantábrica) situated between 60 and 90 km from the coastline. These variogram models had to be validated for coregionalization by the Pardo-Igúzquiza and Dowd method so as to be able to make the cokriging map. The geometric estimation methods employed were triangulation and inverse distance. The geostatistical estimation methods developed were simple kriging, ordinary kriging, kriging with a trend model (universal kriging), lognormal kriging, and cokriging. In all of these methods, a 3 × 3 km² grid was selected with a total of 2580 points to estimate, a circular search window of 60 km, and a relatively small number of samples with the aim of highlighting the local features and variations on isohyet maps. The kriging methods were implemented using the WinGslib software, incorporating two specific programs, Prog2 and Fichsurf, so as to be able then to make isohyet maps using the Surfer software. All the methods employed, apart from triangulation, rendered realistic maps with good fits to the values of the original data (precipitation) of the sample maps. The problem with triangulation lies not in the reliability of the estimates but in the fact that it gives rise to contrived maps because of the tendency of isohyets to present abundant triangular facets. The reliability of the methods was based on cross-validation analysis and on evaluation of the different types of errors, both in their values and in their graphical representations. Substantial differences were not found in the values of the errors that might discriminate some methods from others in an evident way. Bearing the aforesaid in mind, should we have to make an evaluation of the different estimation methods in decreasing order of acceptance, this would be: kriging with a trend model, inverse distance, cokriging, lognormal kriging, ordinary kriging, simple kriging, and triangulation. The application of other estimation methods such as colocated cokriging, kriging with an external drift, and kriging of variable local means (residual kriging) is dependent on the availability of a digital model of the terrain with an altitude grid of the region.     

气象要素空间插值方法优化

在区域水土平衡模型的研究中 ,空间插值可提供每个计算栅格的气象要素资料。本文运用反距离加权法 (IDW )和梯度距离反比法 (GIDW ) ,对 196 1～ 2 0 0 0年甘肃省及其周围85个气象站点的多年平均温度与降雨量进行了内插。交叉验证结果表明 :对于IDW和GIDW ,二者温度插值的平均绝对误差 (MAE)分别为 2 2 8℃和 0 73℃ ,平均相对误差(MRE)分别为 2 9 0 2 %和 9 4 1% ,降雨插值的MAE值依次为 5 5 2mm和 4 90mm ,MRE值分别为 19 4 3%和 17 80 % ,GIDW明显优于IDW。需要指出的是 :对于降雨 ,当其经纬度和海拔高程的复相关系数大于 0 80时 ,GIDW插值结果优于IDW ;否则相反     

Special Issue on parallel processing in GIS

This paper explores three theoretical approaches for estimating the degree of correctness to which the accuracy figures of a gridded Digital Elevation Model (DEM) have been estimated depending on the number of checkpoints involved in the assessment process. The widely used average‐error statistic Mean Square Error (MSE) was selected for measuring the DEM accuracy. The work was focused on DEM uncertainty assessment using approximate confidence intervals. Those confidence intervals were constructed both from classical methods which assume a normal distribution of the error and from a new method based on a non‐parametric approach. The first two approaches studied, called Chi‐squared and Asymptotic Student t, consider a normal distribution of the residuals. That is especially true in the first case. The second case, due to the asymptotic properties of the t distribution, can perform reasonably well with even slightly non‐normal residuals if the sample size is large enough. The third approach developed in this article is a new method based on the theory of estimating functions which could be considered much more general than the previous two cases. It is based on a non‐parametric approach where no particular distribution is assumed. Thus, we can avoid the strong assumption of distribution normality accepted in previous work and in the majority of current standards of positional accuracy. The three approaches were tested using Monte Carlo simulation for several populations of residuals generated from originally sampled data. Those original grid DEMs, considered as ground data, were collected by means of digital photogrammetric methods from seven areas displaying differing morphology employing a 2 by 2 m sampling interval. The original grid DEMs were subsampled to generate new lower‐resolution DEMs. Each of these new DEMs was then interpolated to retrieve its original resolution using two different procedures. Height differences between original and interpolated grid DEMs were calculated to obtain residual populations. One interpolation procedure resulted in slightly non‐normal residual populations, whereas the other produced very non‐normal residuals with frequent outliers. Monte Carlo simulations allow us to report that the estimating function approach was the most robust and general of those tested. In fact, the other two approaches, especially the Chi‐squared method, were clearly affected by the degree of normality of the residual population distribution, producing less reliable results than the estimating functions approach. This last method shows good results when applied to the different datasets, even in the case of more leptokurtic populations. In the worst cases, no more than 64–128 checkpoints were required to construct an estimate of the global error of the DEM with 95% confidence. The approach therefore is an important step towards saving time and money in the evaluation of DEM accuracy using a single average‐error statistic. Nevertheless, we must take into account that MSE is essentially a single global measure of deviations, and thus incapable of characterizing the spatial variations of errors over the interpolated surface.     

A crustal seismic velocity model for the UK, Ireland and surrounding seas

A regional model of the 3-D variation in seismic P -wave velocity structure in the crust of NW Europe has been compiled from wide-angle reflection/refraction profiles. Along each 2-D profile a velocity–depth function has been digitised at 5 km intervals. These 1-D velocity functions were mapped into three dimensions using ordinary kriging with weights determined to minimise the difference between digitised and interpolated values. An analysis of variograms of the digitised data suggested a radial isotropic weighting scheme was most appropriate. Horizontal dimensions of the model cells are optimised at 40 × 40 km and the vertical dimension at 1 km. The resulting model provides a higher resolution image of the 3-D variation in seismic velocity structure of the UK, Ireland and surrounding areas than existing models. The construction of the model through kriging allows the uncertainty in the velocity structure to be assessed. This uncertainty indicates the high density of data required to confidently interpolate the crustal velocity structure, and shows that for this region the velocity is poorly constrained for large areas away from the input data.     

中国土壤温度的空间插值方法比较

利用中国698个气象站点1971~2000年的地面气候资料,采用三种不同方法预测中国0cm、20cm和40cm深度年均土壤温度的空间分布,其中普通克里格和泛克里格法直接以年均土壤温度数据为源数据、回归克里格法以中国年均气温数据和中国DEM数据为源数据进行预测。预测结果的准确性通过平均绝对误差(MAE)和均方根误差(RMSE)值来评价。结果表明回归克里格法预测的MAE值和RMSE值均为最小,说明其预测结果的准确性最好、预测的极端误差也最小;其次为泛克里格法;普通克里格法预测的效果最差。回归克里格法预测结果由于采用了中国DEM数据进行修正,在空间特征表达方面能够更好地表达复杂地形地区的局部变异,其平滑效应明显小于泛克里格法和普通克里格法的预测结果。