Page 91 - Modern Spatiotemporal Geostatistics

72 Modern Spatiotemporal Geostatistics — Chapter 3

• The specificatory or case-specific knowledge base S (obtained through ex-
perience with the specific situation).
Thus, !?C= § U S represents the total physical knowledge available.

COMMENT 3.1 : Fo r modern geostatisticians i t would b e an ostrich-like

policy to ignore the significance of these knowledge bases. It has been argued
that spatial correlation models (belonging to the § base) constitute one of

the most consequential steps of any geo statisticalstudy, the rest is well-

known calculus (Journel, 1989). This being the case, it makes no sense

to leave out of the mapping process other important Q and S knowledge

bases (physical laws, local theories, empirical relationships, uncertain ob-

servations, etc.), and restrict analysis to only the usually limited amount
of exact measurements available.

Among the most significant developments in the frontier of research nowa-
days is that a vast body of knowledge is becoming available as a result of a
new horizontal integration among disparate scientific disciplines. The realiza-
tion on the part of many researchers that the problems they are confronted
with are shared by other researchers in disparate fields leads to new highly
interdisciplinary knowledge bases.

Figure 3.1. An integration framework of subsurface contamination studies.

EXAMPLE 3.1: Figure 3.1 shows an integration framework of a subsurface
contamination scenario with its health, ecologic, and economic consequences.
Various biomedical and non-biomedical fields are involved in this framework, in-
cluding biology, toxicology, epidemiology, medicine, Earth sciences, engineering,
ecology, economics, and management. The framework emphasizes the need for