A novel disaggregation model that combines a machine learning model and kriging of residuals is presented to map precipitation at a fine scale from coarse scale precipitation data. Random forest (RF) and fine scale auxiliary variables are used to estimate trend components at a fine scale. Residual components are then estimated by area-to-point residual kriging. A case study of spatial disaggregation of TRMM monthly precipitation data acquired over the Korean peninsula is carried out to illustrate the potential of the presented disaggregation method. From the evaluation results, the presented method outperformed the RF-based disaggregation method that only considers trend components and ignores residual components, in terms of accuracy statistics and the ability of coherent predictions. This case study indicates that accounting for residual components by applying a proper spatial prediction method such as area-to-point kriging is very important in spatial disaggregation of coarse scale spatial data, even though advanced regression models such as RF could have high goodness of fit for the quantification of relationships between a target attribute and auxiliary variables.

• 박노욱(인하대학교 공간정보공학과) | No-Wook Park Correspondence
• 김예슬(인하대학교 공간정보공학과) | Yeseul Kim