Application of the Principal Component Analysis to explore the relation between land use and solid waste generation in the Duy Tien district, Ha Nam Province, Vietnam

Abstract

The paper presents and discusses the methodology used and the results obtained by the application of the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) on a set of socio-economical and land use data collected in the Duy Tien district (Ha Nam province), Vietnam. Objective of this study is to use PCA as a data reduction method to verify if a relation could be established between the quantities of waste generated in a region and its land use and socio-economical characteristics. Data was collected by a team from the Center for Applied Research in remote sensing and GIS (CARGIS) at the University of Sciences in Ha Noi. This study is part of the research Project "Study the land use changes and its influences to the waste in rural sector of Duy Tien District based on Remote Sensing and GJS utilization ". The project is funded by Vietnam National University for the period 2007-2009. Due to the limited availability of statistic data only three types of economic activity relation are preliminarily chosen for PCA to reveal which activity is the predominant for each commune: Non-farming income/Agriculture Dimensions, Development of the Tertiary Sector/Agriculture and Non-farming Income /Built-up zones expansion. The quantity of waste is than compared with the activity identified as predominant. All these results are than imported to GIS environment to give the cartographic presentation and to serve the future analysis.