Air Quality Evaluation Based on Grey Clustering Method: A Case Study of 74 Cities in China

The air quality index (AQI) has been highly valued by many countries and cities as a directional indicator reflecting regional pollution status. The existing AQI only highlights the level of the most polluted pollutant. This paper constructed a new evaluation index by integrating all pollution indicators based on the grey fixed weight clustering analysis model, then a case study was carried out involving 74 cities in China to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results show that the evaluation method proposed in this paper is more scientific, which can not only effectively measure the comprehensive pollution level of each city, but also give pollution control strategies for each city from multiple indicators and has achieved good empirical results.