Regression modelGeostatistics
Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW)
Inverse distance weighting is a simple, deterministic method for estimating values at unsampled locations by taking a weighted average of nearby measured points, where closer points carry more weight. Introduced by Donald Shepard in 1968, it embodies the first law of geography — near things are more related than distant things — and is one of the most widely used interpolation methods in GIS for mapping continuous fields such as rainfall, elevation, or pollution from scattered samples.
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Sources
- Shepard, D. (1968). A two-dimensional interpolation function for irregularly-spaced data. Proceedings of the 23rd ACM National Conference, 517–524. DOI: 10.1145/800186.810616 ↗
- Li, J., & Heap, A. D. (2008). A review of spatial interpolation methods for environmental scientists. Geoscience Australia Record 2008/23. link ↗