Ricardo A. Olea - Böcker

This volume provides a comprehensive collection of definitions of geostatistical terms. There are more than 600 entries at varying levels of complexity to assist readers with different backgrounds. Cross-references make the book easily accessible to students, engineers, and others concerned with the meaning of terms found in geostatistical research and practice. Lists of equivalent terms in Chinese, French, German, Greek, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish are included.

Engineers and earth scientists are increasingly interested in quantitative methods for the analysis, interpretation, and modelling of data that imperfectly describe natural processes or attributes measured at geographical locations. Inference from imperfect knowledge is the realm of classical statistics. In the case of many natural phenomena, auto- and cross-correlation preclude the use of classical statistics. The appropriate choice in such circumstances is geostatistics, a collection of numerical techniques for the characterization of spatial attributes similar to the treatment in time series analysis of auto-correlated temporal data. As in time series analysis, most geostatistical techniques employ random variables to model the uncertainty that goes with the assessments. The applicability of the methods is not limited by the physical nature of the attributes. This book presents a concise introduction to geostatistics with an emphasis on detailed explanations of methods that are parsimonious, nonredundant, and through the test of time have proved to work satisfactorily for a variety of attributes and sampling schemes.Most of these methods are various forms of kriging and stochastic simulation. The presentation follows a modular approach making each chapter as self-contained as possible, thereby allowing for reading of individual chapters, reducing excessive cross-referencing to previous results and offering possibilities for reviewing similar derivations under slightly different circumstances. Guidelines and rules are offered wherever possible to help choose from among alternative methods and to select parameters, thus relieving the user from making subjective calls based on an experience that has yet to be acquired. It is intended to assist in the formal teaching of geostatistics or as a self tutorial for anybody who is motivated to employ geostatistics for sampling design, data analysis, or natural resource characterization. Real data sets are used to illustrate the application of the methodology.

Engineers and earth scientists are increasingly interested in quantitative methods for the analysis, interpretation, and modeling of data that imperfectly describe natural processes or attributes measured at geographical locations. Inference from imperfect knowledge is the realm of classical statistics. In the case of many natural phenomena, auto- and cross- correlation preclude the use of classical statistics. The appropriate choice in such circumstances is geostatistics, a collection of numerical techniques for the characterization of spatial attributes similar to the treatment in time series analysis of auto-correlated temporal data. As in time series analysis, most geostatistical techniques employ random variables to model the uncertainty that goes with the assessments. The applicability of the methods is not limited by the physical nature of the attributes. Geostatistics for Engineers and Earth Scientists presents a concise introduction to geostatistics with an emphasis on detailed explanations of methods that are parsimonious, nonredundant, and through the test of time have proved to work satisfactorily for a variety of attributes and sampling schemes. Most of these methods are various forms of kriging and stochastic simulation. The presentation follows a modular approach making each chapter as self-contained as possible, thereby allowing for reading of individual chapters, reducing excessive cross-referencing to previous results and offering possibilities for reviewing similar derivations under slightly different circumstances. Guidelines and rules are offered wherever possible to help choose from among alternative methods and to select parameters, thus relieving the user from making subjective calls based on an experience that has yet to be acquired. Geostatistics for Engineers and Earth Scientists is intended to assist in the formal teaching of geostatistics or as a self tutorial for anybody who ismotivated to employ geostatistics for sampling design, data analysis, or natural resource characterization. Real data sets are used to illustrate the application of the methodology.

This book introduces a novel synthetic paradigm of public health reasoning and epidemic modelling, and then implements it in the study of the infamous 14th century AD Black Death disaster that killed at least one-fourth of the European population. The book starts by focusing on the intellectual context in which epidemic research takes place, in a way that accounts for the interdisciplinary and multicultural trends of the emerging Conceptual Age. The authors maintain that for public health scientists to function in an often complex environment, they should be aware of the divergent conceptions of knowledge and the technological changes that these imply, the multiple and often uncertain databases available and their reliability, the different styles of thinking adopted by the disciplines involved, and the importance of developing sound interdisciplinary knowledge integration skills.A unique feature of the book is that it takes the reader through all four major phases of interdisciplinary inquiry: adequate conceptualization (in terms of metaphors, methodological principles, epistemic rules, and argumentation modes), rigorous formulation (involving sophisticated mathematical models), substantive interpretation (in terms of correspondence principles between form and meaning), and innovative implementation (using advanced systems technology and multi-sourced real world databases). This approach is then applied to scientifically advance the spatiotemporal characterization of the Black Death epidemic, thus going beyond the sensationalistic narration of events found in other publications.The book includes the most complete collection of interdisciplinary information sources available about the Black Death epidemic, each one systematically documented, tabulated, and analyzed. It also presents, for the first time, a series of detailed space-time maps of Black Death mortality, infected area propagation, and epidemic centroid paths throughout the 14th century AD Europe.Preparation of the maps took into account the uncertain nature of the data and integrated a variety of interdisciplinary knowledge bases about the devastating epidemic. These maps provide researchers and the interested public with an informative and substantive description of the Black Death dynamics (temporal evolution, local and global geographical patterns, etc.), and can help one discover an underlying coherence in disease distribution that was buried within reams of contemporary evidence that had so far defied quantitative understanding. The book carefully analyzes the findings of synthetic space-time modelling that enlighten considerably the long-lasting controversy about the nature and origins of the Black Death epidemic. Comparisons are made between the spatiotemporal characteristics of Black Death and bubonic plague, thus contributing to the debate concerning the Black Death etiology. Since Black Death had grave societal, public health, and financial effects, its rigorous study can offer valuable insight into these effects, as well as into similar effects that could result from potential contemporary epidemics.