Software Tools for Spreading Climate And Terrain Information over A Surface

This Phase I research will create improved software tools for spreading climate and terrain information over a surface. Implementation of state-of-the-art methodologies for interpolation and extrapolation will increase the usefulness of georeferenced data. Useful directions to pursue will be identified by examining the geostatistical abilities of existing software, through product examination and literature review, and a software-product/geostatistical-capability matrix will be created. Candidate methods, which show promise but lack useful implementations, will be identified for possible development. A test and evaluation protocol will be designed with procedural guidelines for reliable assessment of empirical models. A data test suite, containing climate and terrain datasets for areas with varying degrees of homogeneity, will be collected and prepared for use in Phase I and II research. Selected candidate empirical methods will be implemented in software and verified. Empirical models will be developed and evaluated using existing and state-of-the-art methods, and the results carefully compared Usefulness of coupling a rule-based "expert system" to the geostatistical software will be examined. Methods for displaying results, including integration into GIS, will be explored. Results will include software tools, test datasets, and guidelines for further research and development. Reliable spreading of climate and terrain data would enhance information visualization for planning in field operations in industry, military, agriculture,science & engineering Commercial applications: high quality multi-variable kriging software package; hybrid toolset combining kriging and rule-base for more accurate spreading; ArcView GIS add-on modules.