Atmospheric Environment Vulnerability Cause Analysis for the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Metropolitan Region

Yang Zhang, Jing Shen and Yu Li
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Yang Zhang: Resources and Environmental Research Academy, North China Electric Power University, Beijing 102206, China
Jing Shen: Resources and Environmental Research Academy, North China Electric Power University, Beijing 102206, China
Yu Li: Resources and Environmental Research Academy, North China Electric Power University, Beijing 102206, China

IJERPH, 2018, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-21

Abstract: Assessing and quantifying atmospheric vulnerability is a key issue in urban environmental protection and management. This paper integrated the Analytical hierarchy process (AHP), fuzzy synthesis evaluation and Geographic Information System (GIS) spatial analysis into an Exposure-Sensitivity-Adaptive capacity (ESA) framework to quantitatively assess atmospheric environment vulnerability in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) region with spatial and temporal comparisons. The elaboration of the relationships between atmospheric environment vulnerability and indices of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity supports enable analysis of the atmospheric environment vulnerability. Our findings indicate that the atmospheric environment vulnerability of 13 cities in the BTH region exhibits obvious spatial heterogeneity, which is caused by regional diversity in exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity indices. The results of atmospheric environment vulnerability assessment and the cause analysis can provide guidance to pick out key control regions and recognize vulnerable indicators for study sites. The framework developed in this paper can also be replicated at different spatial and temporal scales using context-specific datasets to support environmental management.

Keywords: atmospheric environment; quantitative vulnerability assessment; Exposure-Sensitivity-Adaptive Capacity framework; fuzzy theory; environmental management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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