Clustering analysis and its applications

With data mining becoming more and more important in many research area, cluster analysis has played an important role in geoscience application domain. Though the range of clustering algorithms that have been developed is broad, this paper will classify them according the broad approach or method adopted by each: a partitioning method, a hierarchical method, a density-based method, a grid-based method, a model-based method. The application of the new clustering algorithm demonstrates that data mining techniques can be used in geophysical data interpretation and can get meaningful and useful results, and that the new clustering algorithm can be used in other real world applications.