The problem addressed in this project is that of fitting a smoothing or interpolating surface to data values associated with scattered points in the plane. The surface function provides a visual impression of the data, thus enabling its efficient evaluation. It also enables the computation of integrals and values or derivatives at arbitrary points. Surface fitting methods are useful in almost every field of scientific inquiry, and are particularly important in meteorology, geology, geophysics, geography, and engineering design. Criteria for judging the value of a data fitting method include faithfulness to the data, a pleasing appearance of the fitting function, computational efficiency, storage efficiency, user- convenience, and user-control of parameters which define the fitting function. The objective of the proposed research is to produce a surface fitting method and software package. The software is to be placed in the public domain and distributed to the scientific community through the ACM Algorithms Distribution Service.
