Prioritizing Sustainable City Indicators for Cambodia

Urban Sustainability: Integrating Socioeconomic and Environmental Data for Multi-Objective Assessment

The large concentration of the world’s population in cities, along with rapid urbanization, have brought numerous environmental and socioeconomic challenges to sustainable urban systems (SUS). However, current SUS studies focus heavily on ecological aspects, rely on SUS indicators that are not supported by available data, lack comprehensive analytical frameworks, and neglect SUS regional differences. This paper develops a novel approach to assessing urban sustainability from regional perspectives using commonly enumerated socioeconomic statistics. It integrates land use and land cover change data and ecosystem service values, applies data mining analytics to derive SUS indicators, and evaluates SUS states as trade-offs among relevant SUS indicators. This synthetic approach is called the integrated socioeconomic and land-use data mining–based multi-objective assessment (ISL-DM-MOA). The paper presents a case study of urban sustainability development in cities and counties in Inner Mongolia, China, which face many environmental and sustainable development problems. The case study identifies two SUS types: (1) several large cities that boast well-developed economies, diversified industrial sectors, vital transportation locations, good living conditions, and cleaner environments; and (2) a few small counties that have a small population, small urban construction areas, extensive natural grasslands, and primary grazing economies. The ISL-DM-MOA framework innovatively synthesizes currently available socioeconomic statistics and environmental data as a unified dataset to assess urban sustainability as a total socio-environmental system. ISL-DM-MOA deviates from the current indicator approach and advocates the notion of a data-mining-driven approach to derive urban sustainability dimensions. Furthermore, ISL-DM-MOA diverges from the concept of a composite score for determining urban sustainability. Instead, it promotes the concept of Pareto Front as a choice set of sustainability candidates, because sustainability varies among nations, regions, and locations and differs between political, economic, environmental, and cultural systems.

Research on the coordination characteristics and interaction between the innovation-driven development and green development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt in China

Both innovation-driven development and green development are important ways to achieve regional sustainable development. This study considers the innovation-driven development and green development evaluation systems of 130 cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt. The entropy TOPSIS method is used to measure the innovation-driven development index and the green development index of 130 cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt. Then, a coupling coordination evaluation model and a spatiotemporal heterogeneity analysis model are constructed to discuss the coupling coordination index of regional innovation-driven development and green development in the Yangtze River Economic Belt and to determine its temporal and spatial distribution characteristics. Finally, we choose a spatial panel regression model to explore the relationship between the innovation-driven development index and the green development index of the Yangtze River Economic Belt. The research results show that there is a significant difference between the innovation-driven development index and the green development index of the 130 cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt in terms of the temporal and spatial distribution. The level of innovation-driven development lags behind the level of green development on the whole, and the two fail to form a good spatial matching degree. The coordination index of the two has an imbalanced distribution feature, and there is a significant direct or indirect relationship between the two structural indicators in a mathematical sense. This study improves the academic community's understanding of the interaction between innovation-driven development and green development, provides scientifically based support for green development, and offers guidance for the implementation of innovation capabilities.

An Empirical Study on Data Validation Methods of Delphi and General Consensus

Data collection and review are the building blocks of academic research regardless of the discipline. The gathered and reviewed data, however, need to be validated in order to obtain accurate information. The Delphi consensus is known as a method for validating the data. However, several studies have shown that this method is time-consuming and requires a number of rounds to complete. Until now, there has been no clear evidence that validating data by a Delphi consensus is more significant than by a general consensus. In this regard, if data validation between both methods are not significantly different, then just using a general consensus method is sufficient, easier, and less time-consuming. Hence, this study aims to find out whether or not data validation by a Delphi consensus method is more significant than by a general consensus method. This study firstly collected and reviewed the data of sustainable building criteria, secondly validated these data by applying each consensus method, and finally made a comparison between both consensus methods. The results showed that seventeen of the valid criteria obtained from the general consensus and reduced by the Delphi consensus were found to be inconsistent for sustainable building assessments in Cambodia. Therefore, this study concludes that using the Delphi consensus method is more significant in validating the gathered and reviewed data. This experiment contributes to the selection and application of consensus methods in validating data, information, or criteria, especially in engineering fields.

An integrated importance-performance analysis and modified analytic hierarchy process approach to sustainable city assessment

Sustainable urban development has been a popular subject in urban studies and related disciplines. Owing to the challenges faced by cities worldwide to accommodate the growing urban populations, it is becoming ever more important for innovative research on sustainable urban development to be performed to help cities achieve sustainability. This study develops and tests an integrated approach to sustainable city assessment, which is a combination of importance-performance analysis (IPA) and modified analytic hierarchy process (AHP). Questionnaires designed following the IPA concept were distributed to residents of three cities. The importance scores from the collected data were factorized and the factors' relative scores were then calculated using a formula developed in this study to represent pairwise comparisons. The derived criteria weights were applied to the performance scores to evaluate the cities' relative overall sustainability performance. This approach replaces the AHP's 1-9 scale with the IPA's importance rating scale, which is a Likert scale, in the questionnaire. Based on the findings, implications and future research suggestions were provided.

Assessing Sustainability of the Capital and Emerging Secondary Cities of Cambodia Based on the 2018 Commune Database

The world is rapidly urbanizing which 68% of its population is expected to live in urban areas by 2050. Likewise, secondary cities of Cambodia are rapidly emerging while the capital is the largest city with a population of more than two million. Improving urban sustainability is, therefore, necessary for the world, as well as Cambodia. Thus, Cambodia has launched clean city standard indicators, proposed sectoral green city indicators, and adapted one target of global sustainable development goal 11 (UN SDG 11), to improve its urban quality and sustainability. However, using these indicators is not sufficient towards achieving urban sustainability because these indicators are limited in social and economic dimensions. Hence, this study aims to develop all dimensional indicators of sustainability based on all targets of UN SDG 11 with the above indicators. This study focused on the priorities of indicators in Cambodia verified and prioritized by Delphi and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) techniques. Then, a priority-based urban sustainability index for Cambodia was formed based on the concept of sustainability in developing countries. Finally, the standard scores were applied to comparatively assess the sustainability of capital and emerging secondary cities of Cambodia based on the 2018 Commune Database. Through this application, the study also sought to find out whether the priority weights of indicators are necessary for the comparative assessment. The results showed that the sustainability levels of Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville were found to be strong in all environmental, social, and economic dimensions. Battambang is also strong although economic sustainability is slightly lower than the average. Siem Reap is low in economic sustainability level while Poi Pet is remarkably low in environmental and social sustainability. Furthermore, the ranks of sustainability levels of the five cities based on weighted scores are different from their ranks based on unweighted scores. Therefore, this study confirms that priority weights of indicators are necessary for the comparative assessment towards improving the accuracy of the comparison.

Benefit Evaluation of Water and Soil Conservation Measures in Shendong Based on Particle Swarm Optimization and the Analytic Hierarchy Process

Soil erosion is the main threat to the stability of ecological environment and the harmonious development of society in Shendong Mining Area. The main causes of this threat include the strong interference of natural characteristics and land development. Scientific soil and water conservation measures can coordinate the contradictions among coal economic development, ecological protection, and residents’ prosperity. Based on particle swarm optimization and analytic hierarchy process, the benefit evaluation system of soil and water conservation measures in Shendong Mining Area is established. The weight ratio of three kinds of benefits in Shendong coal mine collapse area is: ecological benefit > social benefit > economic benefit. The conclusion shows that the implementation of the national policy and the effect of mining area management meet the expectation. Therefore, this study provides effective reference and reasonable suggestions for soil and water conservation in Shendong Mining Area. In terms of control measures, bioengineering measures, such as increased coverage of forest and grass as well as reasonable transformation of the landscape pattern of micro landform, can improve the degree of soil erosion control, optimize the land use structure, and improve the land use rate.