Kriging in ArcGIS

• Advantages
  • smoothing done within mapping software
  • handles anisotropy, albeit in an ad hoc fashion
• Drawbacks
  • implicit smoothing parameter(s) estimated in an ad hoc and complicated way, with multiple user choices
  • user can't easily adjust degree of smoothing in a transparent way
  • non-normality is not handled via the usual statistical approaches (i.e., logistic regression, Poisson regression, etc.)
• Suggested approach:
  • fit statistical models, including spatial smoothing in R or S-plus, export to ArcGIS
  • in ArcGIS, do visualization, spatial manipulations