Construction and application of an assessment index system for evaluating the eco-community’s sustainability

Abstract

An assessment index system including environment, socio-culture, economy and technology was established for evaluating environmental construction level of community (objective construction), and questionnaire was designed according to paper review for evaluating residential satisfaction (subjective satisfaction). The index system was divided into four layers: system (A), subsystems (B), categories (C), and indicators (D), and in total of 38 indicators was established. The Xihe community, affiliated to Nanfen district, Benxi City, Liaoning Province, China was selected as a case study. Results indicated that the community sustainability index related to objective environmental construction was 0.4355 and was classified as class Ⅲ (moderate); the community sustainability index related to the residential satisfaction was 0.4255, belonging to class Ⅲ. In conclusion, the sustainability of Xihe community was moderate and needed to be improved.Residential satisfaction was lower than objective environmental construction. The assessment index system established in this study is able to reflect the comprehensive sustainability of community and can be used to evaluate other similar communities' sustainability.

Neighborhood Sustainability Assessment: Evaluating Residential Development Sustainability in a Developing Country Context

“…The subjectivity associated with scoring and weighting of different criteria has made this practice vulnerable to ambiguity. When subjectivity exists, research studies often used an expert-led approach such the Analytic Hierarchy Process [21,23]; and Delphi [21]. Recently, studies have highlighted that a consensus-based approach is helpful in such a situation in order enhance the transparency, which is pointed out to be an essential characteristic of scoring and weighting systems [16].…”

“…Standardization or normalization of criteria score is also a common practice in the NSA process, which helps to make the criteria comparable. Different normalization techniques have been used in the literature including standard deviation, min-max, categorical scale, and above and below mean [21,45]. In the NSA system, the weighted sum method is usually used for the derivation (aggregation) of composite or thematic scores based on normalized criteria scores and criteria weights [21,22].…”

“…In the NSA system, the weighted sum method is usually used for the derivation (aggregation) of composite or thematic scores based on normalized criteria scores and criteria weights [21,22]. Sometimes, the composite score is again classified (e.g., equal interval classification) to denote the level of sustainability of a neighborhood in a more understandable Likert-scale format (e.g., excellent, good, average, poor, bad) [21,23].…”

“…A similar method was used in a number of previous research studies (e.g., [21,[69][70][71][72][73][74]). The initial search identified a total of 128 sustainability indicators in three major sustainability categories of environmental, social and economic (see Table A1).…”

“…For example, Han et al [21] estimated sustainability level of an eco-community (i.e., Xihe in China), and found that it achieved only a moderate sustainability level despite the community was built to become a sustainable neighborhood. NSA tools have also been used to provide greenness certificates of neighborhoods by respective authorities [17,22].…”