The purpose of this paper is to analyze the characteristics and human effects of atmospheric pollution in the Yangtze River Basin (YRB). An AQI(Air Quality Index)-based weighted co-word method is applied to explore the characteristics of keywords taken from the data, using authoritative media sources and government reports. Hierarchical clustering techniques are utilized to classify and visualize the keywords and display the different types of incidents. The results reveal the following four main clusters: enterprise pollution, coal-burning pollution, traffic pollution, and air pollutants. Cluster 1 is divided into 7 sub-clusters to offer powerful insight into the structural characteristics of industrial activities. This study is one of the first attempts to use a bibliometric approach to visualize the underlying and interconnected sub-clusters from grey data. It also provides an atmospheric pollution mapping for formulating government policies by understanding the human effects of air pollution incidents.
Keywords: Yangtze River Basin; air pollution incidents; clustering; co-word analysis.