Documenting Results
The results of any geospatial analysis should be documented so that a reviewer can reconstruct the analysis. This guidance includes a review checklist, which can be used to explain geospatial analyses conducted at an environmental site. The checklist can be used to either prepare or review geospatial analysis for proper methods and results interpretation.
The documentation should highlight the following:
- objectives of the analysis
- description of the site conditions
- summary of the CSM
- sources of data and variables analyzed
- exploratory data analysis, evaluation of potential spatial discontinuities in the data set (such as faults or slurry walls that would break the relationship between data values on either side), and correlation analysis, if applicable
- estimation, regression, kriging or simulation methods, and the basis for the selection of the methods
- results, including assessment of uncertainty in estimated values (for example, variance estimates or cross-validation results)
- conclusions and recommendations
- appendices of data, exploratory data graphs and maps, any software input and output
