Module 2

• Spatial Data Processing

– Spatial data - sources, models, structures

– Analysis and Interpolation

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 Sources of Geographical Data
• maps, aerial photographs, satellite images,
tables, paper map, thematic map, digitally
topographic map
• Data must be geometrically registered to some
coordinate system
• Steps needed to create a spatial database:
• acquire data in digital form from a data supplier,
• digitize existing analogue data, and
• carry out one’s own survey of geographic entities
• interpolate from point observations to continuous
surfaces.

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 Remote Sensing Systems
• Remote sensing is the collection of data about an object without
coming into contact with it.
• This involves the detection and recording of values of emitted or
reflected electro¬ magnetic radiation (energy emitted by all bodies
with a temperature greater than -273 C) using sensors onboard
aircraft and satellites.
• Simple systems only register a single value for each of a limited
number of wavebands (a range of wavelengths of electromagnetic
radiation)
• that have been chosen to give as much information as possible
about certain aspects of the earth’s surface such as vegetation, rock
and soil minerals, and water.
• For example, the scanners on the French SPOT satellite record
values for four wavebands (Band 1; 0.5-0.6 Jim, Band 2; 0.6-0.7 jam,
Band 3; 0.7-0.8 jam, Band o.8-1.1 p.m) in order to be able to detect
differences in water, vegetation, and rock.
• Multispectral scanners now in development record continuous
spectra for each pixel and therefore generate huge amounts of
data.
• The spatial resolution, or the area covered by a single pixel,
depends on the altitude of the sensor, the focal length of
the lens or focusing system, the wavelength of the
radiation, and other inherent characteristics of the sensor
itself.
• Pixel sizes vary from a square kilometer for data from
meteorological satellites to a few square centimeters for
aircraft-based, high-resolution sensors.
• Data collected by remote sensing are affected by
atmospheric conditions and irregularities of the platform,
such as tilt and orientation.
• Geometric and radiometric corrections are needed prior to
data input to the GIS to minimize these distortions.
• The visual appearance of the images can be improved by
increasing contrast, stretching the range of grey levels or
colours used, and by edge detection, to make it easier to
recognize spatial features.
• Stereo aerial (3D) photographs are overlapping, analogue
images having many applications like creation of
topographical maps and orthophoto maps by
photogrammetry.

• Stereo aerial photographs are a major source of data for

the human interpretation and mapping of geology, soil,
vegetation, or land cover

• Used as valuable background documents for placing other

spatial data in a proper geographical context –
Georeferencing.

• Digital photogrammetry and digital orthophoto mapping

provide data on terrain elevation and land cover directly in
digital form without the need for conversion from a paper
analogue document.

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 Traditional means of GIS Data
collection
• Ground or field surveys to record sample
values at known locations, using instruments
• Recorded in terms of a series of point location
and attribute values in a table
• Or interpolated to a continuous surface.

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• The most usual and convenient coordinate system used in GIS
is orthogonal cartesian coordinates, oriented conventionally
north-south and east-west.

• There are three main ways for projecting locations from an

ellipsoid onto a plane surface, namely cylindrical projections,
azimuthal projections, and conical projections.

• The best projection to use depends on the location of the site

on the surface of the earth

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• As per cartographers ,
– cylindrical projections are best for lands between the
tropics,
– conical projections are best for temperate latitudes, and
– azimuthal projections are best for polar areas.

• The most widely used, general projection is called the

Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM), developed by
the US Army in the late 1940s, which is now a world
standard for topographic mapping and digital data
exchange.

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 Base levels
• All elevation data are referenced to mean
annual sea levels.
• These, are not constant over the whole world
and may differ by some meters from one side
of a continent to the other.
• All national mapping agencies (NMAs) have
defined local base reference levels to suit their
conditions

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 Georeferencing raw data
• Ground and field surveys are georeferenced in many ways.
• Ground checks are needed to locate aerial photographs and
satellite images correctly.

• laser theodolites are used to mark boundaries.

• Sources of demographic and socio-economic data such as

the census are linked to cartographically defined areal units
.
• Similar for data collected by administrative or municipal
authorities.

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 Georeferencing with GPS
• Defining and recording the location of a data
point has been eased through the
development of Global Position Systems (GPS)

• These instruments are able to define the

geographical location and altitude, to varying
degrees of accuracy, anywhere on the earth’s
surface using triangulation geometry based on
signals emitted by the NAVSTAR GPS satellites.

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• GPS is an important source of locational
information particularly in areas where map
coverage is limited.
• The main limitations are the accuracy with
which the geographical position can be
derived because the precise time code is
dithered by the US Department of Defense,
the number of satellites in view, and the
quality of the GPS receiver.

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 Geographical data collectors and providers
• National Mapping Agencies (NMA), natural resource survey institutes,
commercial organizations, and individual researchers are all involved in
collecting and disseminating geographical data, both in analog and digital
form.
• Government agencies are the main collectors, providers, and users of
geographical information; of all data they collect.
• National or regional mapping agencies responsible for collecting
systematic data on phenomena such as the nature of the terrain, natural
resources, human settlements, and infrastructure.
• Other surveys are carried out by more specialized agencies that record
variables such as land ownership, employment and journey to work
patterns, soils and geology, rainfall and temperature, river flow and water
quality.
• National mapping agencies have the mandate for defining and maintaining
the map spheroids, projections, grid origins, orientation and spacing,
reference sea levels, data measurement and collection standards, which
are then used by others, such as commercial mapping companies, as well
as being responsible for providing standard topographic map coverage.
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• The main problems associated with remotely
sensed data as a systematic data source stem
from
• (a) their availability which is limited by factors
such as cloud cover,
• (b) their cost (variable between the different
government and commercial supplying
organizations), and
• (c) the need for special image processing systems
so that recognizable entity-based information can
be derived from the raster images

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 Ad hoc data collectors

• Data collected by commercial organizations

such as private surveyors, civil engineers,
market researchers, political organizations, or
academic institutions are often project
specific.

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 Data providers
• Data providers offer or sell geographical data
in a variety of detail, formats, scales, and
structures

• Geographical information available for

distribution by the data providers is subject to
various physical and legal restrictions

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 Data providers
• Data providers offer or sell geographical data in a variety of
detail, formats, scales, and structures.

• Traditionally data collectors and providers were the same

organizations but recently these roles have become more
separate and distinct.

• Some organizations, including commercial companies, have

acquired the rights to resell data they have themselves not
collected. For example, there are agencies in many
countries which are distributors of remotely sensed data
from the US landsat and French SPOT systems.

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 Direct spatial data capture
• Data which is captured directly from the
environment is known as primary data.
1. Direct observation of the relevant geographic
phenomena.
2. Done through ground-based field surveys, or by
using remote sensors in satellites or airplanes
• With primary data the core concern in knowing
its properties is to know the process by which it
was captured, the parameters of any instruments
used and the rigour with which quality
requirements were observed.

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• Remotely sensed imagery is usually not fit for
immediate use, as various sources of error and
distortion may have been present.

• An image refers to raw data produced by an

electronic sensor, which are not pictorial, but
arrays of digital numbers related to some
property of an object or scene, such as the
amount of reflected light.

• When the reflectance values have been

translated into some ‘thematic’ variable, we refer
to it as a raster.

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 Indirect spatial data capture
• Any data which is not captured directly from the
environment is known as secondary data.

• Data derived from existing paper maps through scanning,

data digitized from a satellite image, processed data
purchased from data capture firms or international
agencies, and so on.

• Scanned maps/topographic maps, Digital elevation model

from maps – Raster Data
•
• Topographic surveys/Lidar survey, taxonomy and other
attribute data from existing datasets – Vector data

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Key sources of secondary data
• Digitizing
• Scanning
• Vectorization

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 Other source of data
• Clearinghouses and web portals
• Web portal categorizes all available data and
provides a local search engine and links to
data documentation (also called metadata).
• It often also points to data viewing and
processing services.

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 Metadata
• Metadata is defined as background information that
describes all necessary in- formation about the data itself.
• It is known as ‘data about data’.
• Metadata answer who, what, when, where, why, and how
• This includes:

• Identification information: Data source(s), time of

acquisition, etc.

• Data quality information: Positional, attribute and temporal

accuracy, lineage, etc.

• Entity and attribute information: Related attributes, units of

measure, etc.

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 Creating digital data sets by manual input
(Secondary data)

• The manual input of data to a GIS involves four main

stages:
• entering the spatial data,
• entering the attribute data,
• spatial and attribute data verification and editing,
• and, where necessary, linking the spatial to the
attribute data.

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 Entering the spatial data

• digitizers, scanners, or stereoplotters are used to

encode the X and Y coordinates of the desired points.

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 Digitizers
• A digitizer is an electronic or electromagnetic tablet upon
which a map or document is placed. Embedded in the table, or
located directly under it, is a sensing device that can accurately
locate the centre of a pointing device which is used to trace the
data points of the map.

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 Rasterization
• Rasterization (vector to raster conversion) is the
process of converting vector data into a grid of pixel
values.
• This involves basically placing a grid over the map
and then coding the pixels according to the
occurrence or not of the phenomena.

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 Document scanners

• Scanners are devices for

converting analogue data
into digital grid-based
images.
• They are used in
geographical data capture
to convert paper maps to
high-resolution raster
images which may be used
directly or further
processed to give vector
representations.

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 Two types of Scanner
• There are two basic kinds of scanners,
1. record data on a step-for-step basis,
2. scan a whole document in one operation in a manner akin to
xerography.

• The first kind of scanners incorporate a source of illumination

on a movable arm (usually light emitting diodes or a stabilized
fluorescent lamp) and a digital camera with a high- resolution
lens.
• The camera is usually equipped with special sensors known as
Charge Coupled Devices or CCDs arranged in an array.

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• A digital two-dimensional image
ofthe map is built up by the
movement of either the scanner or
the map

• With these photo-mechanical

scanners the cell or pixel size of
the scanned image is controlled by
the step size and the rate at which
either the document or the light
source moves.

• There are also scanners such as the

Laserscan VTRACK system in
which the laser beam can be
trained to follow clearly
distinguishable features

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 Second Type
• Modern document scanners that use a method akin to
xerography resemble laser printers in reverse because the
scanning surface is manufactured with a given resolution of
light-sensitive spots that can be directly addressed by software.

• Colour scanning is possible by using a range of light-sensitive

materials for each pixel

• If the original map quality is poor giving a scanned image with

low grey scale contrast, variable background intensity, and
noise, locally adaptive binarization methods may improve
results

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 Vectorization
• Vectorization (raster to vector conversion) is usually
undertaken using specialist software which provides
algorithms converting arrays of pixels to line data.

• Various systems such as Laser-Scans VTRACK and

Hitachi CAD-Core tracer systems have been developed
which give the operator more control over the unit
extraction process

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 Analytical stereoplotters
• A third type of technology used for capturing digital
geographical data is a stereoplotter.
• This is a photogrammetric instrument used to record the levels
and positions of terrain and entities directly from stereo pairs
of aerial photographs (taken of the same area but from a
slightly different viewing positions).
• In recent developments, digital stereo images from satellite
sensors, video recordings, and digital cameras have been used
to generate elevation data using specialized photogrammetric
algorithms in image processing systems.

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 Entering the attribute data
• Attribute data (sometimes called feature codes) are those
properties of a spatial entity that need to be handled in the GIS,
but which are not themselves spatial.
• For example, a road may be captured as a set of contiguous
pixels, or as a line entity and represented in the spatial part of
the GIS by a certain colour, symbol, or data location.
• Attribute data may come from many different sources such as
paper records, existing databases, spreadsheets, etc. They may
be input into the GIS database either manually or by importing
the data using a standard transfer format such as TXT, CSV, or
ASCII.

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Data verification
and editing
• Once the data have
been entered it is
important to check
them for errors,
possible
inaccuracies,
omissions, and
other problems
prior to linking the
spatial and the
attribute data.

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 Linking spatial and attribute data

• In GIS with relational database structures the final process in

the manual capture of data involves the linking of the attribute
and spatial databases through identifiers which are common to
the records in both.

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 Data structuring
• Following the data capture process the data are now in one of
two form
• geometrically correct raster data, or
• topologically and geometrically correct vector data.

• Modern GIS will accept both kinds of data but it may be

necessary to restructure the spatial data from one form to the
other, depending on the application.

• Structuring of the database as a whole is required to optimize

the storage requirements and querying performance of the GIS
through sensible ordering and data compression techniques

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 Data Quality
• Positional, Temporal and Attribute accuracy
• Lineage
• Completeness
• and logical consistency

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 Accuracy and Precision

Accuracy reflects how close a measurement is to a known or

accepted value, while precision reflects how reproducible
measurements are, even if they are far from True value.

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 Positional accuracy
• Human errors in measurement (e.g. reading
errors)
• Instrumental or systematic errors (e.g. due to
misadjustment of instruments).
• Random errors caused by natural variations in
the quantity being measured
• Measurement errors are generally described
in terms of accuracy

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 Attribute accuracy
• For nominal or categorical data, the accuracy
of labeling (for example the type of land
cover, road surface, etc).
• For numerical data, numerical accuracy (such
as the concentration of pollutants in the soil,
height of trees in forests, etc).

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 Temporal accuracy
• Data can provide useful temporal information
such as changes in land ownership and the
monitoring of environmental processes such
as deforestation.
• Analogous to its positional and attribute
components, the quality of spatial data may
also be assessed in terms of its temporal
accuracy.
• For a static feature this refers to the difference
in the values of its coordinates at two different
times.

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 Lineage
• Lineage describes the history of a data set

• Lineage may be defined more formally as:

“that part of the data quality statement that contains

information that describes the source of observations
or materials, data acquisition and compilation
methods, conversions, transformations, analyses and
derivations that the data has been subjected to, and
the assumptions and criteria applied at any stage of
its life.”

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 Completeness
• Completeness refers to whether there are data lacking
in the database compared to what exists in the real
world.
• Completeness can relate to either spatial, temporal, or
thematic aspects of a data set.
• For example, a data set of property boundaries might
be spatially incomplete because it contains only 10 out
of 12 suburbs; it might be temporally incomplete
because it does not include recently subdivided
properties; and it might be thematically over complete
because it also includes building footprints.

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 Logical consistency
• For any particular application, (predefined) logical
rules concern:
• The compatibility of data with other data in a
data set (e.g. in terms of data format), The
absence of any contradictions within a data set,
the topological consistency of the data set, and
the allowed attribute value ranges, as well as
combinations of attributes.
• For example, attribute values for population,
area, and population density must agree for all
entities in the database.

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 Data Preparation
• Data checks and repairs
• Combining data from multiple sources

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 Data checks and repairs
• Acquired data sets must be checked for quality in
terms of the accuracy, consistency and
completeness parameters.
• focus on the geometric, topological, and attribute
components of spatial data.
• ‘Clean-up’ operations are often performed in a
standard sequence.
• With polygon data, one usually starts with many
polylines, in an unwieldy format known as
spaghetti data,

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 Data checks and repairs
• Associating attributes
• Rasterization or vectorization
• Topology generation
– more topological relations may sometimes be needed,
for instance in networks, e.g. the questions of line
connectivity, flow direction, and which lines have over
and underpasses.
– For polygons, questions that may arise involve
polygon inclusion: Is a polygon inside another one, or
is the outer polygon simply around the inner polygon?

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 Combining data from multiple sources
• Four Cases:

• They may be about the same area, but differ in

accuracy
• They may be about the same area, but differ in
choice of representation
• They may be about adjacent areas, and have to
be merged into a single data set
• They may be about the same or adjacent areas,
but referenced in different coordinate systems

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 Differ in accuracy

• Due to scale differences in the sources, the resulting polygons

do not perfectly coincide, and polygon boundaries cross each
other. This causes small, artefact polygons in the overlay
known as sliver polygons.
• If the map scales involved differ significantly, the polygon
boundaries of the large-scale map should probably take
priority, but when the differences are slight, we need
interactive techniques to resolve the issues.
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 Differ in Representation

The links between various representations for the same

object maintained by the system allows switching between
them

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 Combining Adjacent Areas

Edge matching is the process of joining two or more

map sheets.

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 Different Coordinate system
• Map projections provide means to map
geographic coordinates onto a flat surface (for
map production)
• different coordinate systems, or are based
upon different datums.
• Data Transformations may need coordinate
transformation or both a coordinate trans-
formation and datum transformation.

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 Point data transformation
• Suppose we have captured a sample of points but
wish to derive a value for the phenomenon at
another location or for the whole extent of our
study area.
• OR we may want to transform our points into
other representations in order to facilitate
interpretation and/or integration with other data.
• Example: homogeneous areas (polygons) from
our point data, or deriving contour lines.
• This is refered as Interpolation.

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 Interpolation
• the calculation of a value from ‘surrounding’
observations.
• Interpolation is the process of using points
with known values or sample points to
estimate values at other unknown points. It
can be used to predict unknown values for any
geographic point data, such as elevation,
rainfall, chemical concentrations, noise levels,
and so on.

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• Interpolation is the procedure of predicting the value
of attributes at unsampled sites from measurements
made at point locations within the same area or
region.
• Predicting the value of an attribute at sites outside the
area covered by existing observations is called
extrapolation.
• Interpolation is necessary,
• (a) when the discretized surface has a different level
of resolution, cell size or orientation from that
required Example from one gridded tessellation with
a given size and/or orientation to another. This
procedure is known generally as convolution.
• (b) when a continuous surface is represented by a
data model that is different from required, Example
TIN to raster or raster to TIN or vector polygon to
raster
• (c) when the data we have do not cover the domain of
interest completely (i.e. they are samples). Example
are the conversion of data from sets of sample points
to a discretized, continuous surface.
 Data sources for interpolation
• Sources of data for continuous surfaces include:
• Stereo aerial photos or overlapping satellite images using
photogrammetry.
• Scanners in satellites or aeroplanes and document scanners
• Point samples of attributes measured directly or indirectly in
the field on random, structured, or linear sampling patterns,
such as regular transects or digitized contours.
• Digitized polygon/choropleth maps.
Spatial sampling
 Methods of interpolation
• The methods of interpolation include:
• Global methods

❖ classification using external information

❖ trend surfaces on geometric coordinates
❖ regression models on surrogate attributes
❖ methods of spectral analysis

• Local deterministic methods

❖ Thiessen polygons and pycnophylactic methods

❖ linear and inverse distance weighting
❖ thin plate splines.
 Global and Local Interpolator
• Global interpolators use all available data to provide
predictions for the whole area of interest,
• while local interpolators operate within a small zone
around the point being interpolated to ensure that
estimates are made only with data from locations in
the immediate neighborhood, and fitting is as good as
possible.
• Regression
• Fourier Transform
• Wavelets
 Global prediction using classification
models

• Statistical (mean variance) Information or information at every coordinate

• compute predictions by using well-known, standard analysis of variance (ANOVA)
methods.

• where z is the value of the attribute at location x0, μ is the general mean of z over
the domain of interest, αk is the deviation between μ and the mean of unit k, and ε
is residual (pooled within-unit) error, sometimes known as noise.
 Global interpolation using trend surfaces
• When variation in an attribute occurs continuously over a landscape it may be
possible to model it by a smooth mathematical surface

• multiple regression of attribute values versus geographical location.

• The idea is to fit a polynomial line or surface, depending on whether our data are in
one or two dimensions, by least squares through the data points thereby minimizing
the sum ofsquares for z(Xj) - z(x,). It is assumed that the spatial coordinates (x,y)
are the independent variables, and that z, the attribute of interest and the dependent
variable is normally distributed.
 Local, deterministic methods for
Interpolation
• For this approach, interpolation involves
• (a) defining a search area or neighbourhood around the point
to be predicted,
• (b) finding the data points within this neighbourhood,
• (c) choosing a mathematical function to represent the variation
over this limited number of points and
• (d) evaluating it for the point on a regular grid. The procedure
is repeated until all the points on the grid have been computed.
• Following different interpolation functions are there:

• Nearest neighbours
• Inverse distance weighting
• Splines (exact and thin plate smoothing) and other non-linear
functions (e.g. Laplacian)
• Optimal functions using spatial covariation.
 Nearest-neighbour interpolation
• Simply find the ‘nearest’ known value to the
point (x, y) location, and assign that value to
it.
• Use the distance that points are away from (x,
y) to weight their importance in our
calculation.

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 Discrete and Continuous Data /
Qualitative and Quantitative Data

Qualitative Data Quantitative Data

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 Interpolating discrete data
• For discrete (nominal, categorical or ordinal)
data, we are effectively restricted to using
nearest-neighbour interpolation.
• This technique will construct ‘zones’ around
the points of measurement, with each point
belonging to a zone assigned the same value.
Effectively, this represents an assignment of
an existing value (or category) to a location.

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 Thiessen polygons
• If the desired output was a polygon layer, we
could construct Thiessen polygons around the
points of measurement. The boundaries of
such polygons, are the locations for which
more than one point of measurement is the
closest point.

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• Unless there are many observations (which usually there are
not), this assumption is not really appropriate for gradually
varying phenomena like rainfall and temperature and air
pressure because
• (a) the form of the final map is determined by the distribution
of the observations, (b) the method maintains the choropleth
map fiction of homogenity within borders and all change at
borders. As there is only one observation per tile, there is no
way to estimate within-tile variability,
• An advantage of Thiessen polygons is that they can be easily
used with qualitative data like vegetation classes or land use
 Tobler’s pycnophylactic method
• A major difficulty with both approaches is that the quantities measured are
assumed to be homogeneous within units and to change value only at the
boundaries. This is often a gross approximation, particularly for attributes
that exhibit spatial contiguity, such as population densities (people tend to
congregate) or rainfall
• Tobler (1979) addressed this problem by devising a continuous, smooth
interpolator that removes the abrupt changes due to inappropriate
boundaries. His method was designed for counts of population in
administrative areas to deal with the problem that people are not spread
uniformly over an administrative area, but tend to congregate in certain
parts. The method, known as pycnophylactic interpolation, is a mass-
preserving reallocation from primary data.
 Interpolating continuous data
• Interpolation of values from continuous
measurements is significantly more complex
• Many continuous geographic fields—elevation,
temperature and ground water salinity.
• Commonly, continuous fields are represented as
rasters
• The main alternative for continuous field
representation is a polyline vector layer, in which
the lines are isolines(vector).

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 Interpolating continuous data
• Four techniques to use measurements to
obtain a representation of the entire field
using point samples are
– Trend surface fitting using regression,
– Triangulation,
– Spatial moving averages using inverse distance
weighting,
– Kriging.

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 Trend surface fitting
• Entire study area can be represented by a formula f (x,
y) that for a given location with coordinates (x, y) will
give us the approximated value of the field in that
location.
• Derive a formula that best describes the field.
• Simplest formula describes a flat, but tilted plane is
• f (x, y) = c1 · x + c2 · y + c3.
• This judgement must be based on domain expertise
• Determining best values for the coefficients c1, c2 and
c3.
• Statistical techniques known as regression techniques
can be used to determine values for these coefficients
ci that best fit with the measurements.

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Various global trend surfaces obtained from regression
techniques: (a) simple tilted plane; (b) bilinear saddle; (c)
quadratic surface; (d) cubic surface. Values range from white
(low), via blue, and light green to dark green (high).
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• Not all fields are representable as simple,
tilted planes.
• higher-order polynomial function
• Bilinear Saddle
– f (x, y) = c1 · x + c2 · y + c3 · xy + c4
• quadratic surfaces, described by:
– f (x, y) = c1 · x2 + c2 · x + c3 · y2 + c4 · y + c5 · xy + c6.
• Cubic Surface given by:

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• Trend surface fitting is a useful technique of
continuous field approximation, though
determining the ‘best fit’ values for the
coefficients ci is a time-consuming operation.
• Once these best values have been determined,
we know the formula, making it possible to
compute an approximated value for any location
in the study area.
• It is possible to use trend surfaces for both global
and local trends
• Sometimes single formula can describe the field
for the entire study area is an unrealistic one

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• Identify the parts, apply the trend surface fitting
techniques, and obtain an approximation polynomial
for each part.
• Local trend surface fitting is not a popular technique in
practical applications, because they are relatively
difficult to implement, and other techniques such as
moving windows are better for the representation and
identification of local trends
• It is relatively simple to generate a raster layer, given an
appropriate cell resolution and an approximation
function for the cell’s value.
• In order to generate a vector layer representing this
data, isolines can be derived, for a given set of
intervals.

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 Triangulation
• Triangulated Irregular Networks (TINs)
• This technique constructs a triangulation of
the study area from the known measurement
points.
• After having obtained it, we may define for
which values of the field we want to construct
isolines.

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 TIN
• Triangulated Irregular Network, or TIN is a
commonly used data structure in GIS software.
• It can be used to represent any continuous field.
• It is built from a set of locations for which we
have a measurement, for instance an elevation.
• The locations can be arbitrarily scattered in
space, and are usually not on a nice regular grid.

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 TIN

Input locations and their (elevation) values for a TIN construction.

The location P is an arbitrary location that has no associated
elevation measurement.

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• Any location together with its elevation value
can be viewed as a point in three-dimensional
space. From these 3D points, we can construct
an irregular tessellation made of triangles.

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• In three-dimensional space, three points
uniquely determine a plane, as long as they
are not collinear.
• A plane fitted through these points has a fixed
aspect and gradient, and can be used to
compute an approximation of elevation of
other locations.
• Since we can pick many triples of points, we
can construct many such planes, and
therefore we can have many elevation
approximations for a single location.

95
• Obtain a triangular tessellation of the complete
study space.
• There are many different tessellations for a given
input set of anchor points.
• Some tessellations are better than others, in the
sense that they make smaller errors of elevation
approximation.
• The second (in Fig) will provide a better
approximation because the average distance
from P to the three triangle anchors is smaller.
• Delaunay triangulation, which is an optimal
triangulation.

96
• Some properties of Delaunay Triangle:
– Equilateral Triangle for the given the set of anchor
points.
– For each triangle, the circumcircle through its three
anchor points does not contain any other anchor
point.
• A TIN is a vector representation
• Each anchor point has a stored georeference.
• It is an irregular tessellation
• In this case, the cells do not have an associated
stored value as is typical of tessellations, but
rather a simple interpolation function that uses
the elevation values of its three anchor points.

97
• For instance, for elevation, we might want to
have the 100 m-isoline, the 200 m-isoline, and
so on. For each edge of a triangle, a geometric
computation can be performed that indicates
which isolines intersect it, and at what
positions they do so. A list of computed loca-
tions, all at the same field value, is used by the
GIS to construct the isoline

98
Triangulation as a means of interpolation

(a)Known point measurements.

(b)Constructed triangulation on known points.
(c)Isolines constructed from the triangulation.

99
Isolines constructed from the triangulation

100
 Moving Window averages using
inverse distance weighting (IDW)
• Moving window averaging attempts to directly
derive a raster dataset from a set of sample
points
• sometimes also called ‘gridding’
• A ‘window’ also known as a kernel is defined
• Moving window averaging is said to be a local
interpolation method.

101
No measurements available Computation is based on eleven
measurements

102
• simplest averaging function will compute the
arithmetic mean

• The principle of spatial autocorrelation

suggests that measurements closer to the cell
centre should have greater influence on the
predicted value than those further away
• Weighted distance functions are called inverse
distance weighting functions (IDW).

103
P >= 1

104
 Moving window averaging parameters
• Raster resolution:
– Larger cell size will smooth the function, removing local variations
– Smaller cell size will result in large clusters of equally valued cells, with
little added value
• Shape/size of window:
– Most procedures use square windows, but rectangular, circular or
elliptical windows are also possible. These can be useful in cases
where the measurement points are distributed regularly at fixed
distance over the study area, and the window shape must be chosen
to ensure that each raster cell will have its window include the same
number of measurement points. The size of the window is another
important matter. Small windows tend to exaggerate local extreme
values, while large windows have a smoothing effect on the predicted
field values.
• Selection criteria:
• Not necessarily all measurements within the window need to be used in averaging.
We may choose to select use at most n (nearest) measurements
• Averaging function:
– It is possible to use different distance–weighting functions, each of
which will influence the calculation of the resulting value.

105
 Kriging
• Kriging is usually used when the variation of an attribute
and/or the density of sample points is such that simple
methods of interpolation may give unreliable predictions
• Kriging is based on the notion that the spatial change of a
variable can be described as a function of the distance
between points.
• It is similar to IDW interpolation, in that the surrounding
values are weighted to derive a value for an unmeasured
location.
• However, the kriging method also looks at the overall
spatial arrangement of the measured points and the spatial
correlation between their values, to derive values for an
unmeasured location.

106
• The first step in the kriging procedure is to
compare successive pairs of point
measurements to generate a semi-variogram.
• In the second step, the semi-variogram is used
to calculate the weights used in interpolation.

107
• Kriging uses idea of rationalized variable which varies
from place to place with some continuity, which cannot
be modelled with single smooth mathematical
equation.
• Ex: changes in the grade of ores, variation in soil
qualities, number of vegetative variables
• Each surface treated separately with three values
1. Drift or structure of surface, treat the surface as a
general trend in particular direction
2. Kriging assume that there will be small variations
from the general trend such as small peaks and
depressions that are random but still related spatially
3. Random noise that is neither associated with trend
nor spatially autocorrelated.

108
• Drift is estimated using a mathematical
equation
• Elevational distance is measured with the use
of statistical graphing technique called
semivariogram, which plot the distance
between samples called lag and the
semivariance
• Semivariance is the measure of
interdependency of the elevational values
based on closeness.

110
• A critical component of generating any Kriging
model is creating the semivariogram, which is a
plot that shows the variance in measure with
distance between all pairs of sampled locations.
• Points near to each other are expected to be
more similar than points that are farther apart.
• The range is the lag till where autocorrelation
exists among points based on distance.
• The nugget variance is the error or random
effect.
• The sill is the distance at which points are no
longer spatially autocorrelated.

111
112
• Kriging is a powerful type of spatial
interpolation that uses complex mathematical
formulas to estimate values at unknown
points based on the values at known points.
There are several different types of Kriging,
including Ordinary, Universal, CoKriging, and
Indicator Kriging.

113
• Two general forms:
• Universal
• Used when surface is estimated from
irregularly distributed samples where trends
exist- nonstationarity
• Punctate
• Assumes that data exhibit stationarity are
isotropic and are equally spaced locations.

114
 Problems of Interpolation
• While applying any interpolation methods
following fur factors matter:
• No. of control points
• Location of control points
• Problem of saddle points
• Area containing data points

115
• No. of control points
– More data points in case of unevenly generalized
surface
– More data points not always improve accuracy
– More complex surface needs more control points
– To capture necessary details

116
• Location of points
– Sample placement is more severe when interpolation
of collected data by area is considered to produce
isoplethic map
– Isopleth maps simplify information about a region by
showing areas with continuous distribution. Isopleth
maps may use lines to show areas where elevation,
temperature, rainfall, or some other quality is the
same; values between lines can be interpolated.
– Centroid of cell method for to locate the sample data
points
– Center of gravity method is most applicable when
sample polygons are either clustered or unevenly
distributed.

117
• Saddle point problem
– Sometimes called alternative choice problem

118
119
• Area under consideration
– Select control points from all direction for better
interpolation
– Best interpolation results obtained when area
from all neighbourhood selected.

120
121
 Type of Spatial Data
● Raster
○ PNG
○ Geotiff
● Vector
○ CSV
○ ESRI Shapefile (European Petroleum Survey Group)
○ Geo-JSON - GeoJSON is a geospatial data interchange format
based on JavaScript Object Notation (JSON).
○ Topo-JSON -as an extension of GeoJSON, supports multiple
geometry types: Point, LineString, Polygon, MultiPoint,
MultiLineString, MultiPolygon, and GeometryCollection.
○ KML and KMZ - KML (formerly known as Keyhole Markup
Language) is an XML-based file format for displaying information
in a geographic context, extension(.kml). KMZ stands for KML
Zipped
○ Geopackage - A GeoPackage (GPKG) is an open, non-proprietary,
platform-independent and standards-based data format for
geographic information system implemented as a SQLite
database container.

122
How to Create a Map from Phone’s
camera?
● Install ‘gps photo’, ‘gps status’ on mobile
● Take out your phones everyone.
● Open Camera app.
● Go to settings and Switch on “Save Location”/ “Store
Location”/”On Location”.
● Now click a photo.
● Go to the Info/Details of that photo and you will find
Latitude/Longitude of you image clicked.
● Now, tap on those and your image will open in
Google Map.
● Like this you can collect these Lat/Longs and later
load in QGIS and map will be created. (Introduction
to QGIS is in upcoming lectures).
How to Create a Map from Phone’s camera?
Exercise: Rome Around and COllect Pictures of Healthcare Buildings
(Hospital/Clinic/Medical Shop) and List their Lat/Longs in an Excel Sheet.
That’s how you collected material for digitization of those buildings! (Picture
below is just a sample)
 QGIS
Main 6 features offered by QGIS:
● View Data
● Explore data and compose maps
● Create, edit, manage and export data
● Georeference images
● Analyse data
● Publish maps on the Internet : qgis2web
● Explore more functionality through plugins

125
 Mobile Apps to make maps
● GPS Marker
■ How to make a point/line/polygon
■ Export them.

● GPS essentials
■ Demo for working of app
■ Hands on : use GPS essentials to make a track with images and
waypoints
■ Exporting (choose data format)
○ Others: geopaperazzi, kobotoolbox, mytracks (from google , now obsolete)

126
 Map Marker

● One can easily organize the places they have

gone to using map marker app.
● Set a title, a description, a date, a color,
an icon and pictures for each marker
● Organize your markers into different
folders
● Search for places with Google
● Can edit the previous markers, lines and
polygons

Follow this link for more features:

https://www.mapmarker.app/help
Map Marker: How to create Point Map

To create a new marker

● Click on the add button from
the main map interface
● Then move the map around
to place the target where you
want to place the marker.
● When the target is at the
desired location, click “OK” to
place the marker.
Map Marker: How to create Line Map

To create a new line

● Click on the add button from the main map
interface
● Then click the line button on the left.
● Place new points with the “+” button,
move from one point to another with the
arrow buttons
● Click the save button when you’re done.
Map Marker: How to create Polygon Map

To create a new polygon

● Click on the add button from the
main map interface
● Then click the polygon button on the
left.
● Place new points with the “+”
button, move from one point to
another with the arrow buttons
● Click the save button when you’re
done

Click here for Demo.

Map Marker: How to export map

● Click the "share" button of the main

action bar (last button)
● Select "All markers and folders"
● Select the format of export(KML, KMZ
or CSV file)
● Select the app to export to (Gmail,
Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.)
 GPS Essentials
Navigate, manage waypoints, tracks, routes,
build your own dashboard from 45 widgets.

Record tracks and view them on map.

Export KML files and import into Google
Maps, Google Earth and others.
A camera HUD (heads-up display) view to
show your waypoints, take pictures and
share them.
Manage routes and view them on map.
Import KML files from Google Maps,
Google Earth and others. Create turn-by-
turn instructions between waypoints
GPS Essentials:
● Click here for Demo
(Short Distance)
● Click here for Demo
(Long Distance)
GPS Essentials: Export Map
● Click on 3 dots present at the right most
corner of the screen.
● Select Export option.
● Now you need to choose the format of
the file(KMZ, KML, etc.)
● Now select the app to export the map.
How to get media from KMZ file
● Rename your KMZ file as .zip (it will become a zipped
folder)
● Now, right click and extract files ( unzip)
● Now the folder which will be extracted will have images
clicked by you (in a folder ‘files’) and a KML file (
doc.kml).
 Making Maps : Vector Maps
1. what is a vector map
1. Geometry
2. Attributes
2. How do we get these? Some ways
1. Use CSV
2. Use of mobiles : Use Apps, download , edit
3. Use paper maps : georeference, digitise ( later session)
4. Use satellite images :georeference, digitise ( not to be covered)
5. Use web map sites that allow you to create your map : draw online and
download ( Google My Map)
6. Use fieldpapers: print maps with QR code, draw on paper, retrace,
upload
3. Editing the map : use of QGIS
Importing CSV into QGIS for making maps
- Collect the images you clicked from your phone in one
folder along with the csv file
Importing CSV into QGIS for making maps
- Open QGIS. Go to Layer->Add Vector Layer->Add Delimited Text
Layer
Importing CSV into QGIS for making maps
● The points are loaded you can export the layer as
shapefile now.
Loading KMZ File in QGIS
● GO to Layer->Add Layer->Add Vector

Layer
Loading KMZ File in QGIS
Loading KMZ File in QGIS
Loading KMZ File in QGIS
Exporting KMZ File as Shapefile

● Right click on the

layer
● Click on Export
● Choose ESRI
Shapefile as format
● In File name , give
name of your
choice, and select
folder in which to
save
● Click as Save Feature
As
Editing Shapefile
● Click on Toggle editing
● Click on Node Tool
146