PCA analysis of distributed temperature sensing data from an asphalt field

Asphalt fields like parking lots are found in urban environments. In the literature, they are indicated as one of the factors contributing to the urban heat island effect due to the ability of asphalt to absorb solar energy. Thermal profile data of these fields and their underground layers is, however, understudied and under-analyzed. In this paper, principal component analysis is applied to the measured thermal profile of these layers to find out most important components. The results indicate that original data can be reconstructed well with only three principal components which also makes the data compression possible.