Estimating geostatistics variogram parameters based on hybrid orthogonal differential evolution algorithm

Abstract

Variogram is a basic tool of geostatistics, used to describe the randomicity and structural property of regionalized variable. While estimating variogram parameters is the basic issue of spatial statistics analysis. Estimate of the parameters is always made by using the theoretical variogram model to fit experimental variogram model. However, it is difficult to obtain the optimization results because the theoretical variogram is not successively derivable if traditional numerical algorithm is used. Differential evolution algorithm is a new evolution algorithm which adopts real number encoding format and has a fast convergence. In this paper, it is the first time to use differential evolution algorithm to estimate variogram parameters. Orthogonal experiments are conducted to ensure the diversity of initial species. The results illustrate that the approach of DE can work out the problem with fast convergence, strong optimization and excellent stability. © Springer-Verlag 2009.