Spatial Estimation of Hazardous Waste Site Data

Abstract

Kriging is a technique which can be used to obtain minimum variance, unbiased estimates of the concentration of a pollutant at a point, or the average concentration in an area or volume. In this paper, the use of simple and universal kriging for analyzing the distribution of dioxin (2,3,7,8‐TCDD) in the sediments of a creek is demonstrated. The resulting point and block estimates obtained with both techniques were then compared. Although the universal kriging point estimates were slightly better than the simple kriging estimates, no clear advantage to using universal kriging was apparent in this example. In general, however, universal kriging should be considered whenever a significant drift is present in the data.