SOFTWARE REVIEWS

Interpolation Techniques and Associated Software for Environmental Data

Arjun Akkala,a Vijay Devabhaktuni,a and Ashok Kumarb a EECS Department, The University of Toledo, Toledo, OH 43606 b Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Toledo, Toledo, OH 43606; AKumar@UTNet.UToledo.Edu (for correspondence)
Published online 17 May 2010 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ep.10455

INTRODUCTION

Environmental data are being collected all over the world using monitoring stations, each of which is spread over a geographic region. Researchers are using the collected data for both planning and decision-making. However, they need information at locations/regions that are not covered by the monitoring stations for impact studies. Interpolation techniques ranging from simple ratio method to complex mathematical equations are being used to achieve this task. Interpolation is a method or mathematical function that estimates the values at locations where no measured values are available. Very little research has been conducted, however, to investigate the relative performance of different interpolation methods. The objective of this study is to review different interpolation techniques and the available software. Applications of interpolation techniques to environmental data are also discussed. A comparative study will help researchers and environmental professionals readily decide suitable software and interpolation techniques that suit their specic data interpolation problem. As such, this article aims at providing a comparative study of commonly used techniques and a review of geographic information system (GIS) software for the purpose of interpolating environmental data. This article is divided into various sections. A review of commonly used interpolation techniques is presented in Review of Interpolation Techniques section, a review of popular off-the-shelf GIS software is given in Review of Available Software section, several examples of application of interpolation techniques/
2010 American Institute of Chemical Engineers

software to environmental problems are reviewed in Applications of Interpolation Techniques and Software section, a detailed case study of a scenario of interpolating environmental data is presented in Case Study section, and remarks and conclusions are given in Conclusion section.
REVIEW OF INTERPOLATION TECHNIQUES

Interpolation can be as simple as a number line. However, most environmental and geographic information science research involves spatial data. Spatial interpolation assumes that the attribute data are continuous over space. This allows for the estimation of the attribute at any location within the data boundary. Another assumption is that the attribute is spatially dependent, indicating the values closer together are more likely to be similar than the values farther apart. These assumptions allow for the spatial interpolation methods to be formulated. Spatial interpolation is widely used for creating continuous data when data are collected at discrete locations (i.e., grids/points). For example, Radon concentration data provided by the Ohio Department of Health (ODH) are collected from testing laboratories. An interpolation method is used to create concentration maps covering the entire state of Ohio. These point data are displayed as interpolated surfaces for qualitative interpretation. In addition to qualitative research, these interpolated surfaces can also be used in quantitative research toward reduction of cancer caused by Radon inhalation. However, when an interpolated surface is used as part of a larger research project, both the method and accuracy of the interpolation technique become critical, and need to match the requirements. The goal of spatial interpolation is to

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create a surface that is intended to best represent empirical reality. Therefore, the method selected must be assessed for accuracy for larger studies. There are several different ways to classify spatial interpolation procedures. We present some ways of classication for a better understanding. Exact vs. Approximate Exact interpolators honor the data points upon which the interpolation is based, meaning that surface passes through all points whose values are known (e.g., Nearest Neighbor, Thiessen Polygons). Approximate interpolators allow the interpolated curve to follow a broader trend, thus not passing through all the known data (e.g., Splines, Articial Neural Networks). Global vs. Local Global interpolators determine a single function which is mapped across the whole region (e.g., global polynomial interpolation); whereas, local interpolators apply an algorithm repeatedly to a small portion of the total set of points (e.g., local polynomial interpolation). Stochastic vs. Deterministic Stochastic interpolation methods incorporate the concept of randomness, meaning some data points are thought of as being random (e.g., Kriging, Trend Surface Analysis). Deterministic methods do not use probability theory, i.e., all the points are thought of as being accurate (e.g., Nearest Neighbor). Point vs. Areal Point interpolators determine the values at other points given a number of points whose locations and values are known (e.g., weather stations and oil-well readings). Areal interpolators determine the values of data for a different set of target zones given a set of data mapped on a set of source zones (e.g., given population counts). Gradual vs. Abrupt Gradual interpolation methods usually produce an interpolated surface with gradual changes (e.g., Splines); whereas, abrupt interpolators tend to produce surfaces with abrupt changes (e.g., Articial Neural Networks). It is a truism that no one method will ever exist that will be able to reliably account for all potential applications of spatial interpolation. As shown in [1], selecting an interpolation method that is appropriate to a particular situation is at the very heart of reliable use of interpolated data in subsequent applications, such as visualizing a eld or using the data as inputs to a particular spatial analysis. To select an appropriate interpolation method, the decision-making process needs to be based on several criteria. These criteria depend on the characteristics of the eld, characteristics of the sampled eld values, and their mutual relationship. Properties of interpolation methods, expertise of the researchers, purpose of interpo-

lation, and many other factors inuence an appropriate selection, parameterization, and application of an interpolation method. In practice, taking all these dependencies into account can be both challenging and involving. For various limiting factors/reasons (e.g., insufcient expertise or insufcient knowledge on the data properties and origin, or the softwares ability to provide only a few simple methods), the interpolation process may not always be performed properly. Consequently, the quality of interpolated eld values might be adversely affected. A summary of 11 interpolation techniques is given in Table 1 [25]. The table shows the basic principle of each interpolation technique, its main advantages and disadvantages, and the scenario, for which it is best suited. Variations of some of the interpolation techniques are not listed (e.g., Kriging has variations such as ordinary, lognormal, universal). The application of these techniques to an environmental dataset could produce different results.

REVIEW OF AVAILABLE SOFTWARE

To facilitate interpolation, several off-the-shelf software packages are available in the market ranging from one-dimension interpolation to multidimensional interpolation. Specically, software that is used for the purpose of visualizing, interpolating, and manipulating geographical data is commonly referred to as GIS (geographic information system or geographical information system). A GIS is any system that captures, stores, analyzes, manages, and presents data linked to a location. Technically, a GIS is a system that includes mapping software and its application to remote sensing, land surveying, aerial photography, mathematics, photogrammetry, geography, and tools that can be implemented with GIS software (e.g., interpolation). Examples of such software are ArcGIS and Surfpack. A number of GIS packages and related toolsets have particularly strong facilities for processing and analyzing binary, grayscale, and color images. They may have been designed originally for the processing of remote sensed data from satellite and aerial surveys. Many have developed into much more sophisticated and complete GIS tools, e.g., Clark Labs Idrisi software; MicroImages TNTMips product set; the ERDAS suite of products; and ENVI with associated packages such as RiverTools. Alternatively, image handling may have been deliberately included within the original design parameters for a generic GIS package (e.g., Manifold), or simply be toolsets for image processing that may be combined with mapping tools (e.g., the MATLab Image Processing Toolbox). Whatever their origins may be, a central purpose of such tools has been to capture, manipulate and interpret image data, rather than spatial analysis per se, although the latter inevitably follows from the former. A list of popular software used for interpolation has been presented in Table 2, along with important information such as the license information and the available list of techniques [4, 68]. Figure 1 portraits a generic interpolation scheme to predict
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Table 1. A summary of commonly used interpolation techniques and their applications.

Interpolation technique Ease of use Ability to describe the surface at different levels of resolution Simple model Computationally less intensive Can interpolate short-range variations Assists in removal of broader trends prior to further analysis Ease to use, and works well with noisy data Misses the global trends in data Edge effects and multicollinearity caused by spatial autocorrelation Inaccurate in less densely sampled scenarios In most cases, requires visual inspection and manual control of the network

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Principle

Advantages

Disadvantages

Best-suited scenario Densely sampled environmental data Dense and moderate distribution of data points

1 Nearest Neighbor (NN) and Thiessen Polygons 2 Triangulated Irregular Network (TIN)

3 Polynomial Regression (PR) Model has poor ability to predict outside the range of data points Estimation errors increase exponentially with increasing complexity

4 Global Polynomial Interpolation (GPI)

Moderately dense sampling with regard to global variation Regions having sparse data points and simple data patterns Well-distributed data points, preferably with local data patterns

5 Local Polynomial Interpolation (LPI)

6 Trend Surface Analysis (TSA)

Selection of value at closest data point Set of conterminous triangles associated with a mass factor is used to dene the space Fits the variable of interest to a linear combination of regressor variables Works by capturing coarsescale patterns in the data, and tting a polynomial Similar to GPI, but the curve is tted to a local subset dened by a window Separates the data into regional trends and local variations

7 Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW)

Regions having well-distributed data with important local trends, and not so important global trends Moderately dense sampling with regard to local variation Irregularly-spaced data Well-distributed data, with no discontinuities

8 Splines

9 Kriging

Linear combination of known points, weighted inversely by distance Fits a smooth curve to a series of data points Similar to the principle of IDW; however, additionally accounts for the spatial arrangement Visually appealing curves or contour lines Best linear unbiased spatial predictor; and no edgeeffects resulting from trying to force a polynomial to t the data Require fewer samples Ability to learn and generalize data; works well with sparse data distributions; and extrapolation capability

Spatial arrangement of samples does not affect weights May mask uncertainty present in the data Sophisticated programming required; and problems of nonstationarity in realworld data sets

10 Radial Basis Functions (RBF)

Regions with well-distributed data points, though sparse Regions ranging from sparse irregularly distributed data to well-distributed data

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11 Articial Neural Networks (ANN)

Similar to the principle of splines, except the curve is not smooth Learn complex patterns in the available data using Sigmoid functions etc.

Requires good coverage of the input space; and not suited for extrapolation Risk of poor interpolation caused by over-learning or under-learning

Table 2. A comprehensive list of software currently available for environmental data interpolation.

Name of the software Source Requires license to be purchased Requires license to be purchased Requires license to be purchased GNU General Public License GNU General Public License GNU General Public License Mozilla Public License Windows, Linux/Solaris License Platform

Techniques available* 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 1, 2, 3, 1, 3, 2, 6, 7 3 (Bi-Linear) 6, 7, 8, 9 3, 7, 9 6, 7, 8, 9

ArcGIS

IDRISI Taiga TNTMips GRASS GIS SAGA GIS Quantum GIS

Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) Clarks Labs MicroImage US Army Corps of Engineers User Group Association QGIS Development Team Windows Windows, Mac OS X Windows, Mac OS X, Linux Windows, Linux, FreeBSD Linux, UNIX, Windows, Mac OS X Windows Windows Windows, Mac OS X, Linux Windows, Linux, Mac OS X Most platforms Linux Platform-independent Linux, Mac OS X, Windows Windows, Linux, SunOS Platform-independent

MapWindow GIS

MapWindow Open Source Team

ILWIS uDIG

528 North Refractions Research

gvSIG

Prodevelop

GNU General Public License GNU Lesser General Public License GNU General Public License

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VolPack

Requires plug-ins for interpolation 3, 6, 7, 8, 9 Requires plug-ins for interpolation 7, 8, 9 and user-dened methods 3 (Bi-Linear) 3, 8, 9, 11 2 3 (Linear, Cubic) 9 7

Surfpack JUMP GIS GrADS

Free of charge for non-commercial use GNU General Public License GNU General Public License GNU General Public License Requires license to be purchased GNU General Public License

GSLIB HidroSIG

Stanford Computer Graphics Laboratory Sandia National Laboratories Vivid Solutions Inc. Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA) Statios Universidad Nacional de Colombia

*The numbers in the available techniques column in Table 2 refer to interpolation techniques enlisted in Table 1.

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Figure 1. Spatial interpolation of environmental data

using a GIS software. [Color gure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at www.interscience.wiley.com.]

 environmental data at unsampled locations using a GIS software. This review clearly indicates that the ANNs have not been widely used in the off-the-shelf interpolation software. It can also be seen in the next section that there are only a few instances of employing ANNs for spatial interpolation applications, although ANNs seem to have been reliable when/where employed. In Case Study section, ANNs will be shown to offer better accuracy in comparison to other interpolation techniques.
APPLICATIONS OF INTERPOLATION TECHNIQUES AND SOFTWARE

Several applications of the above-mentioned techniques and software have been used previously for the purpose of interpolating environmental data. Some such applications are enlisted below:  Filling missing values in time-series in acid rain modeling was done using linear interpolation averaging through the nearest two breaking values scheme [9].  Estimation of mean rainfall in Guadalhorce River Basin (Spain) was performed using Thiessen polygons, ordinary Kriging, Cokriging, and Kriging techniques with external drift. Of the various techniques, Kriging with external drift was found to work better [10].  ANN was used in the spatial interpolation to downscale general circulation models (GCM) temperature simulation [11].  Three techniques (thin plate smoothing splines, weighted moving average, and Kriging) were used to estimate the monthly and annual rainfall data using the data from 167 climatic stations in south138 July 2010

 

 

west Iran. The TPSS technique was found to be working best in that situation [12]. Ordinary Kriging, modied residual Kriging, Cokriging, and IDW were used in the estimation of snow depth in study sites in the Colorado Rocky Mountains [13]. Concentrations of methyl-tert-butyl-ether (MTBE) were estimated in the groundwater in the city of Temecula, California, using the simple Kriging interpolation technique in the ArcGIS software [14]. Spatial averaging, NN, IDW, and Kriging were used in the estimation of Ozone and Particulate Matter concentrations in air in US [15]. In Greece, the prediction of long-term mean daily reference evapotranspiration was performed using ordinary Kriging, inverse distance squared, residual Kriging (RK) and gradient-plus-inverse distance squared (GIDS) techniques, and the results showed that RK and GIDS produced better prediction accuracies as compared to the other two methods [16]. Estimation of missing nitrogen dioxide (NO2) concentrations in Manchester, UK, was performed using IDW, ordinary Kriging and regularized spline techniques [17]. An estimation of anthropogenic stock of lead in the topsoil of an area around Paris was performed using the soil samplings of a grid soil monitoring network using the lognormal ordinary Kriging [18]. In Hangzhoue Jiaxinge Huzhou (HJH) plain (China), heavy metal concentrations (Cu, Zn, Pb, Cr and Cd) in paddy elds were estimated at unsampled sites from the 450 soil samples, using the ordinary, lognormal Kriging and Cokriging techniques. Of these, Cokriging worked the best [19]. Thiessen polygons and Kriging were used from the common GIS package and the results were compared to those of Australian National University Splines in the estimation of UV exposures at unsampled locations across Unites States [20]. Two techniques (IDW and ordinary Kriging) were used in the prediction of ozone concentrations in the air of urban areas of Prague [21]. TSA, IDW, LPI, thin plate splines, ordinary Kriging, universal Kriging and ordinary Cokriging were used to estimate the wind speeds in England and Wales [22]. Five interpolation techniques, TIN, NN, RBF, biharmonic spline, and ordinary Kriging were used in the reconstruction of Ionospheric total electron content (TEC) maps [23]. Kriging and Cokriging were used in the estimation of missing Radon concentrations in Ohio using the ArsGIS geospatial analyst tool [8, 24]. Three techniques, inverse distance weighting, ordinary Kriging, and universal Kriging were used to estimate missing water quality data, such as salinity, water temperature, and dissolved oxygen at the Chesapeake Bay [25]. Estimation of Arsenic contamination in ground water in Bangladesh was performed using ordinary

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Figure 2. Geometric mean of Radon concentrations across Ohio. [Color gure can be viewed in the online

issue, which is available at www.interscience.wiley.com.]

Kriging and ANN. ANN was found to give better results over Kriging [26].
CASE STUDY

A case study on interpolation of environmental data is presented here using Radon concentration data across Ohio for the purpose of demonstration. Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas produced by the breakdown of Uranium in soil, rock, and water [27]. It is the second most common cause of lung cancer after cigarette smoking, accounting for 7,000 to 30,000 cancer deaths per year in the US [28 30]. To initiate preventive measures to reduce the deaths caused by radon inhalation, it is helpful to have Radon concentration data for each locality. However, such data are not available for each and every zip code in Ohio, for several reasons, including inapproachability. Figure 2 shows the concentration of geometric mean of Radon concentrations across Ohio. For instance, the regions marked in white are the ones, for which, no Radon data is available. At The University of Toledo, data collected, as well as that being collected from homes and schools across Ohio on a regular basis, is organized into a database (see Table 3). Each row contains Radon concentration for the corresponding zip code, along with other data entries (e.g., county name, population). Out of a total of 1,492 zip codes across Ohio,

Radon concentrations are available for only 1,262 zip codes. For the remaining 230 zip codes, interpolation techniques need to be used to estimate the missing Radon concentrations. In places where data is unavailable, Radon concentrations must be estimated using interpolation techniques. In this case study, six interpolation techniques have been used to estimate the missing Radon concentrations: Kriging, IDW, RBF, GPI, LPI, and ANN [8, 24]. 90% of the available data was used for estimating the missing Radon concentrations and the other 10% was used to validate the interpolation techniques. Table 4 shows the average and worst-case errors of the interpolation provided by these techniques. As can be seen from Table 4, interpolation results could vary widely from one technique to another. However, ANN appears to be a promising technique for interpolating Radon data.
CONCLUSION

In our study, 11 different techniques were found in the existing literature for interpolating environmental data. Some of the techniques (e.g., Kriging, IDW, Splines, and TSA) have been applied to estimating missing environmental data such as temperature, rainfall, and toxic substance concentrations. A variety of software tools based on different interpolation
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Table 3. An illustrative portion of The University of Toledo Radon database containing Radon concentrations, in

addition to other relevant information. Zipcode 43019 43021 43022 43023 43025 PO name Fredericktown Galena Gambier Granville Hebron State OH OH OH OH OH Population (1999) 9180 5685 3649 10586 7889 County ID 69 20 41 44 22 County nAME Richland Delaware Knox Licking Faireld GM NA 4.01 7.01 8.85 0.00

GM denotes geometric mean. NA indicates nonavailability.

Table 4. Relative performance of various

LITERATURE CITED

interpolation techniques used for the purpose of estimating missing Radon concentrations in Ohio. Validation error Average Worst-case Interpolation technique error (%) error (%) Kriging 7.18 81.72 Radial Basis Function (RBF) 7.32 80.04 Inverse Distance 7.48 78.34 Weighting (IDW) Local Polynomial 8.76 91.62 Interpolation (LPI) Global Polynomial 9.50 92.25 Interpolation (GPI) Articial Neural 4.64 52.01 Networks (ANN)

schemes (e.g., IDW, Kriging) with potential application in the eld of environmental engineering are available. Techniques that are commonly used for the interpolation of environmental data include Kriging [18, 19, 25], splines [12, 20, 22], trend surfaces [22], and IDW [13, 15, 21]. Recent explosion in the amounts of digital data available from GIS offers the opportunity to include additional information within the estimation process. However, traditional interpolation approaches seldom explicitly incorporate much of this available information, which can be referred to as engineering knowledge. This observation suggests that research and development of knowledge based techniques (e.g., knowledge based neural networks) could result in a new-generation of interpolation schemes that could outperform traditional schemes.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The data used for the case study was taken from the Ohio Radon Information System maintained for the ODH by the Department of Civil Engineering at The University of Toledo. Radon data collection has been supported by the ODH/USEPA and Ohio Air Quality Development Authority for the past 21 yrs.
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