An urban eco-environmental sensitive areas assessment method based on variable weights combination

Qiang Niu (), Li Yu (), Qiao Jie () and Xian Li ()
Additional contact information
Qiang Niu: University of Wuhan
Li Yu: Suzhou University of Science and Technology
Qiao Jie: Foshan Urban Planning and Survey Institute
Xian Li: Nanning Urban and Rural Planning and Design Institute

Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, 2020, vol. 22, issue 3, No 18, 2069-2085

Abstract: Abstract When assessing urban eco-environmental sensitive areas (Urban Eco-ESAs) by multi-criteria evaluation method, the widely used weighted linear combination method may inevitably lead to some factors of high sensitive value being neutralized by other factors of low sensitive value, resulting in the neglect of some eco-sensitive areas as a consequence, while on the other hand, Boolean OR combination method, which give a result of high sensitive value as long as any factor has the value of high sensitivity and thus ignore the mutual compensation mechanism among ecological factors, can lead to excessively wide ranges of the eco-sensitive areas. To overcome the defects of these two methods, the authors propose an Urban Eco-ESAs synthesized assessment method giving finely controlled priority to bottleneck factors, and relative model based on selective local encouraging variable weights combination. The method is able to increase the weights of some eco-bottleneck factors on the basis of a weight-changing function in synthesizing multiple factor assessments as long as their assessment values break the bottleneck threshold values, which can guarantee the eco-sensitive areas identified by bottleneck factors being embodied in the final result, while also retain the compensation effect of multiple ecological factors, which makes the results of the assessment more reasonable. In order to deliver this empirical research, Taogang Town in China, which is adjacent to Net lake wetland nature reserve area, has been used as an example to confirm the validity of the method and the model.

Keywords: Urban eco-environmental sensitive areas; Synthesized assessment; Encouraging variable weights combination; Bottleneck factors (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10668-018-0277-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:endesu:v:22:y:2020:i:3:d:10.1007_s10668-018-0277-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10668

DOI: 10.1007/s10668-018-0277-x

Access Statistics for this article

Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development is currently edited by Luc Hens

More articles in Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().