SPATIAL DEPENDENCE IN SITE INVESTIGATION DESIGN

It is important in site investigation to squeeze the last bit of information from costly field and laboratory data in order to enhance the quality and reliability of the resultant ground profiles and properties. It is also important that the design of the site investigation is the best possible one to facilitate this purpose. Two simple applications of geostatics are used to illustrate these premises. The first shows a method by which the quality of a simple variogram can be used to test the adequacy of borehole spacing to estimate the variation in thickness of a ground layer. The second shows how spatial correlation between data can be used to estimate characteristics (in this case RQD) of points or blocks, and how this resolution can be improved by incorporation of soft data. (A) For the covering abstract see IRRD 883023.