Assessment of Urban Human Settlements Using Multivariate Statistical Techniques: A Case Study of Zhejiang, China

Urban human settlements have always been one of the critical socio-economic issues in Zhejiang. The study presents the application of multivariate statistical techniques such as cluster analysis (CA), factor analysis (FA) and discriminant analysis (DA), to classify the province of Zhejiang and evaluation of urban human settlements. The results showed that the samples cities can be grouped into three clusters, and urban human settlements level of Hangzhou was the best, while urban human settlements level of Lishui was the worst. This study demonstrated that multivariate statistical techniques are effective for urban human settlements classification, and for rapid assessment of urban human settlements.