 Pollution models and inverse distance weighting: some critical remarksPost-Print from HAL Abstract: When evaluating the impact of pollution, measurements from remote stations are often weighted by the inverse of distance raised to some nonnegative power (IDW). This is derived from Shepard's method of spatial interpolation (1968). The paper discusses the arbitrary character of the exponent of distance and the problem of monitoring stations that are close to the reference point. From elementary laws of physics, it is determined which exponent of distance should be chosen (or its upper bound) depending on the form of pollution encountered, such as radiant pollution (including radioactivity and sound), air pollution (plumes, puffs, and motionless clouds by using the classical Gaussian model), and polluted rivers. The case where a station is confused with the reference point (or zero distance) is also discussed: in real cases this station imposes its measurement on the whole area regardless of the measurements made by other stations. This is a serious flaw when evaluating the mean pollution of an area. However, it is shown that this is not so in the case of a continuum of monitoring stations, and the measurement at the reference point and for the whole area may differ, which is satisfactory. Keywords: Inverse distance; IDW; Pollution; Weighting; Exponent; Shepard; distance inverse; pondération; exposant (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published in Computers & Geosciences, 2013, 52, pp.459-469 There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00778417 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Post-Print from HAL |
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