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 Collection
• Spatial data can be obtained from various
sources.
• It can be collected from scratch, using direct
spatial data acquisition techniques, or
indirectly, by making use of existing spatial
data collected by others.

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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 pollu- tants 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 de- scribes 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 overcomplete 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 per-
fectly 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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 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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 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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

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Triangulation as a means of interpolation

(a)Known point measurements.

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

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Isolines constructed from the triangulation

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 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.

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No measurements available Computation is based on eleven
measurements

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• 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).

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P >= 1

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 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.

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 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 it 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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104
• 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.

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• 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.

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 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

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• 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

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• 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.

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• Saddle point problem
– Sometimes called alternative choice problem

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

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 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.

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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

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 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)

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 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
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