<p>Kriging IS gridless. In fact Kriging and RBF are formally equivalent. The reason kriging tends to used on grids is more historical in the oil industry than anything else. The original papers in geostats made no mention of grids. They became popular in the oil industry because a) Flow simulation is generally done on a grid  b) upscaling is non linear (so the linear kriging change of support that was developed for mining was not applicable)..and modelling on a fine grid with flow based upscaling became the norm. c) People were more interested in simulations than estimations...and upscaling becomes even more important in this case</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-01-14T01:33:50.387Z
2018-01-14T01:33:50.387Z
Colin Daly
<p>I read about it somewhere in a paper.  Why is kriging not gridless if I can krig points in space? Whats is the big difference from RBF?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-11-09T13:37:03.437Z
Since this is a (geo)statistical question you'd be better off  searching for an answer (or asking if you cannot find one) to this question in either the [GIS site](https://gis.stackexchange.com/)   or  [cross-validated site](https://stats.stackexchange.com/).
Tom Newton
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-11-11T08:44:44.243Z
What is RBF? Which paper?
Gimelist
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-11-12T21:01:11.223Z
what do you mean by 'not gridless'?
haresfur
<geology><numerical-modelling>
Why RBF is gridless and kriging is not?
Roberto Rolo
# Why RBF is gridless and kriging is not?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2017-11-09)

I read about it somewhere in a paper. Why is kriging not gridless if I can krig points in space? Whats is the big difference from RBF?

**Tags:** geology, numerical-modelling

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Since this is a (geo)statistical question you'd be better off  searching for an answer (or asking if you cannot find one) to this question in either the [GIS site](https://gis.stackexchange.com/)   or  [cross-validated site](https://stats.stackexchange.com/).  
> **username_2**: What is RBF? Which paper?  
> **username_3**: what do you mean by 'not gridless'?  

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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_4 on 2018-01-14. Score: 3

Kriging IS gridless. In fact Kriging and RBF are formally equivalent. The reason kriging tends to used on grids is more historical in the oil industry than anything else. The original papers in geostats made no mention of grids. They became popular in the oil industry because a) Flow simulation is generally done on a grid b) upscaling is non linear (so the linear kriging change of support that was developed for mining was not applicable)..and modelling on a fine grid with flow based upscaling became the norm. c) People were more interested in simulations than estimations...and upscaling becomes even more important in this case


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