Title
A parallel computing approach to fast geostatistical areal interpolation
Abstract
Areal interpolation is the procedure of using known attribute values at a set of (source) areal units to predict unknown attribute values at another set of (target) units. Geostatistical areal interpolation employs spatial prediction algorithms, that is, variants of Kriging, which explicitly incorporate spatial autocorrelation and scale differences between source and target units in the interpolation endeavor. When all the available source measurements are used for interpolation, that is, when a global search neighborhood is adopted, geostatistical areal interpolation is extremely computationally intensive. Interpolation in this case requires huge memory space and massive computing power, even with the dramatic improvement introduced by the spectral algorithms developed by Kyriakidis et al. (2005. Improving spatial data interoperability using geostatistical support-to-support interpolation. In: Proceedings of geoComputation. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan) and Liu et al. (2006. Calculation of average covariance using fast Fourier transform (FFT). Menlo Park, CA: Stanford Center for Reservoir Forecasting, Petroleum Engineering Department, Stanford University) based on the fast Fourier transform (FFT). In this study, a parallel FFT-based geostatistical areal interpolation algorithm was developed to tackle the computational challenge of such problems. The algorithm includes three parallel processes: (1) the computation of source-to-source and source-to-target covariance matrices by means of FFT; (2) the QR factorization of the source-to-source covariance matrix; and (3) the computation of source-to-target weights via Kriging, and the subsequent computation of predicted attribute values for the target supports. Experiments with real-world datasets (i.e., predicting population densities of watersheds from population densities of counties in the Eastern Time Zone and in the continental United States) showed that the parallel algorithm drastically reduced the computing time to a practical length that is feasible for actual spatial analysis applications, and achieved fairly high speed-ups and efficiencies. Experiments also showed the algorithm scaled reasonably well as the number of processors increased and as the problem size increased.
Year
DOI
Venue
2011
10.1080/13658816.2011.563744
International Journal of Geographical Information Science
Keywords
Field
DocType
geostatistical support-to-support interpolation,interpolation algorithm,areal interpolation,attribute value,population density,parallel computing approach,geostatistical areal interpolation,actual spatial analysis application,improving spatial data,areal unit,interpolation endeavor,spatial data,geostatistics,kriging,covariance matrix,spatial autocorrelation,fast fourier transform,parallel computer,spatial analysis,parallel computing,parallel processing,parallel algorithm,qr factorization
Spatial analysis,Kriging,Nearest-neighbor interpolation,Multivariate interpolation,Computer science,Interpolation,Fast Fourier transform,Artificial intelligence,Machine learning,Covariance,Bilinear interpolation
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
25
8
1365-8816
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
10
0.70
8
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Qingfeng Guan1168.64
Phaedon C. Kyriakidis212515.69
michael f goodchild31857209.77