Author(s)

N. P. Volakos, R W. Barber

Abstract

Comparing interpolation methods for processing randomly scattered bathymetric data N.P. Volakos' & R.W. Barber* ^School of Aeronautical, Civil and Mechanical Engineering, University ofSalford, U.K. "Centre for Microfluidics, Department of Computational Science and Engineering, Daresbury Laboratory, U.K. Abstract In order to develop a hydrodynamic model of a natural water body such as an estuary or coastal sea, it is necessary to assign spot depths to all nodes of the computational grid. This paper presents a statistical analysis of the accuracy of three basic techniques, offered by Thompson & Johnson [1], for interpolating between scattered depth data. The methods tested include bilinear interpolation, inverse-power interpolation and Taylor series interpolation. Initially, the ability of each method to reproduce analytically-generated surfaces was investigated and it was found that all methods performed well with dense bathymetric data. However, some of the interpolation techniques were fo

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