主成分分析法在环境评价中的应用辨析.docVIP

Sustainable Development可持续发展, 2012, 2, 103-111 /10.12677/sd.2012.23014 Published Online July 2012 (/journal/sd) Discrimination on Application of Principal Component Analysis in Environmental Assessment* Xiaoli Lu, Dingsheng Zhong Environmental College, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang Email: xiao0820li@126.com, zhongds@ Received: May 4th, 2012; revised: May 21st, 2012; accepted: May 29th, 2012 Abstract: Principal component analysis (PCA) has been widely applied to environmental assessment. Taking the water environmental quality assessment as an example, whether the method can be applied to environ- mental quality assessment has been discussed. And the results showed that it was obviously wrong in many cases. We analyze the reasons why it was wrong in these cases from two aspects including the physical meanings and operation process of PCA, The conclusions were as follows: 1) PCA is a Mathematics method about numerical analysis of covariance essentially, but comprehensive evaluation is the judgment of the value of the evaluation system. When the numerical difference has not constituted value judgments on the compre- hensive evaluation, it is wrong to apply PCA to environmental valuation forcibly; 2) The variance contribu- tion rate only represents the variance information of the index system, not all of the information. It may cause the removal of the important index, if researchers select important indexes only according to variance contri- bution rate. We must consider other factors to select important index, such as, Natural and Geographical con- ditions, Social and Economic status and so on. So it can not be taken as a mainly yardstick to judge whether the value is high or low, and also, it is not appropriate to regard the variance contribution and the weight co- efficient as the same in comprehensive evaluation; 3) PCA is a good mathematical method which has physi- cal meaning itself, but we can’t quote its physica