The Influence of Interpolated Point Location and Density on 3D Bathymetric Models Generated by Kriging Methods: An Application on the Giglio Island Seabed (Italy)

In relation to 3D bathymetric modelling, this article aims to analyze the performance of Kriging approaches in dependence of the location and density of the measured depth points. The experiments were carried out on a multi-beam sonar (MBS) dataset that includes 240,000 soundings covering a sea-bottom area near Giglio Island (Italy). Seven subsets were derived in random way from the initial regular MBS dataset, selecting an increasing number of points uniformly spaced. Seven models were generated for both Ordinary Kriging and Universal Kriging. Each model was submitted to leave-one-out cross-validation to define the exactness of the predictive values and compared with the initial grid to better evaluate the accuracy in dependence of the point number and dissemination. To investigate this relationship, a new index called MVI (Morphological Variation Index) was introduced as a measurement of the level of variation of seabed morphology. The results validate the efficiency of the Kriging methods and remark the influence of the dataset distribution on the 3D model, highlighting MVI as a useful index to represent the seabed variation as a unique value. Finally, in no rugged areas using 1 point every 1000 m2, the RMSE of the differences between measured and interpolated values falls below 1 m, while a further increment of soundings is required in the presence of a high level of variation of seabed morphology.