Adapting the SDEWES Index to Two Hungarian Cities

Abstract

Numerous cities aim to mitigate their contribution to climate change and provide a liveable environment in the context of sustainable development. In order to measure these efforts, benchmarking performance would be a good solution. Methods for environmental analysis have their limitations when it comes to evaluating a city and other aggregated indicators focus on certain aspects of a sustainable or liveable settlement. The SDEWES Index was used for benchmarking several cities of different sizes in terms of metrics related to energy, water and environmental systems successfully thus it was chosen to compare the performance of Veszprém and Zalaegerszeg, two environmentally conscious Hungarian county seats of roughly the same size and population. The SDEWES Index consists of 7 dimensions, namely energy consumption, industrial profile with CO2 emissions, CO2-saving measures, R&D, renewable energy potential and utilization, water and environmental quality, and social environment and sustainability policy. Each dimension is composed of 5 indicators that provide information on sustainable development of energy, water and environmental systems in cities. Using the SDEWES Index the strengths and weaknesses of the two cities are highlighted, locating those key parameters where improvement can be achieved. Both for Veszprém and Zalaegerszeg progress could be realized concerning energy-saving measures and the proportion of green areas could be increased. To improve the method and facilitate a more comprehensive comparison of cities of differing sizes, data should be provided concerning the territory or population. Also, the definition and inclusion of a worst and best case scenario that takes into account the parameters would be advantageous in terms of a comparison. These were named ‘horror’ and SDEWES cities by the authors, respectively.

Informative Environment Qualifying Index

“…1 is illustrated below. The measured value of the parameter PO 4 -P was 169 mg/l and the limit value pertained to it was 200 mg/l [30].…”

“…On the basis of measurements in Zirc, the five parameters for surface water represent an area, I EW , equal to R = 69.78, while the six environmental parameters for air represent an area, I EA , of R = 31.58: Following these steps, the aforementioned algorithm was followed. The element quality factors for water and air, F EW and F EA , were calculated according to the theoretical number of environmental parameters, altogether 92 parameters are to be monitored according to the specifications of GD 2010 [30] and GD 2011 [32]. In the case studies for surface water and air, five and six environmental parameters were investigated, respectively.…”

“…In addition to indexing based on immission limits, it is important to evaluate the sustainability of cities, for * Correspondence: utasi.anett@uni-pannon.hu which the SDEWES Index is an excellent approach [1]. This method has been implemented in Southeast European cities [2] and adapted for Hungarian cities [3].…”

Evaluation of PC-FMEA Using Network Analysis

“…This scale is based on the three evaluation factors, namely severity, occurrence and detection. The second step of the method is to calculate the importance weights based on a comparison matrix [8]. The presented method offers a new method for enhancing the visual evaluation of the importance weights.…”

Exploratory Analysis of Urban Sustainability by Applying a Strategy-Based Tailor-Made Weighting Method

“…Kiss (2015) [28] performed a detailed analysis of energy-related interventions from Pécs, Hungary. Although his paper focused on a given sustainability aspect at the city level, it cannot be treated as a comprehensive urban sustainability analysis; • Sebestyén, Somogyi, Szőke, and Utasi (2018) [29] used the SDEWES index to describe the sustainability of two Hungarian cities by involving 35 indicators in 7 categories. It is unquestionably a comparison-based analysis; however, the applied methodology is not unique concerning the Hungarian context; furthermore, it encompasses only two cities; • Ehnert, Frantzeskaki et al (2018) [10] analyzed five European cities (one of them was Budapest) in terms of urban sustainability transition aspects by comparing planningoriented activities; • three Hungarian cities, namely Győr, Pécs, and Miskolc, have been involved in governance-and development-oriented analysis conducted by Lux (2015) [30]; • Bajmócy, Gébert, Málovics, Berki, and Juhász (2020) [31] assessed urban strategic planning issues in Hungary by paying attention to practice-oriented features of Pécs, Szeged, and Kecskemét; • Kovács et al ( 2019) [32] focused on urban sprawl patterns in case of Budapest as one of the most relevant sustainability challenges regarding the Hungarian capital; • finally, Buzási and Jäger (2020) [33] applied a 30-indicator assessment methodology to describe the overall and sustainability dimensions-related performance of the districts of Budapest.…”