Principal Component Analysis Approach to Evaluate Instrument Performances in Developing a Cost-Effective Reliable Instrument Network for Atmospheric Measurements

Developing a reliable cost-effective instrument network for data measurement is a challenging task for agency decisionmakers. A simple way to fully characterize the performances of an instrument that also considers economical and operational factors-price, maintenance cost, lifetime, etc.-currently does not exist. Through principal component analysis, a method is developed to build a composite index that assigns a single score to each instrument, taking into account all the scientific, economic, and operational aspects. This index will then represent solid help in building and optimizing a cost-effective network, bridging the gap between two very different worlds: the scientific need for precision and economic constraints.