Transferring indicators into different partitions of geographic space

Abstract

Nowadays, spatial analysis led on complex phenomenon implies the usage of data available on heterogeneous territorial meshes, that is to say misaligned meshes. Then, combine these data requires the transfer of each dataset into a common spatial support that can be exploited. This is known as the Change Of Support Problem (COSP). However, it appears that transfer methods are numerous, and they are often linked with a regression model, and other parameters whose selection and tuning may not be straight forward for a non-expert user. Furthermore, the process is also very dependent from both the nature of the data to be transferred and their quality. This paper first proposes a brief overview of some available transfer methods, giving the premises for the characterization of each method. A use case illustrates a transfer operation, and reveals its main difficulties. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.