Ecological Indicators 93 (2018) 282–291

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Ecological Indicators
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolind

Review

Urban sustainability indicators: Challenges and opportunities T

⁎
Pramit Verma, A.S. Raghubanshi
Integrative Ecology Laboratory (IEL), Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development (IESD), Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi 221005, India

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Urbanization has become one of the most important issues which define the human relationship with the eco-
Indicator application system. Measuring progress towards sustainable or unsustainable urban development requires quantification
Indicator evaluation with the help of suitable sustainability indicators. There is a general ignorance about contextual meaning and
Indicator framework understanding of the concept of sustainability which differs from country to country and economic strata of the
Sustainability targets
society. Our review aims to reduce this challenge by identifying major issues faced in the development and
Urban sustainability
implementation of sustainability indicators in an urban context and suggesting remedial recommendations. We
have identified two broad categories of challenges according to their development and implementation phase
respectively, and three preliminary criteria in the application of urban sustainability indicators.

1. Introduction This accumulation of anthropogenic assets is the result of growth in

economic and social status. Sustainable development has been tradi-
The ecological footprint of cities extends much beyond their ad- tionally identified with three major areas of environmental, economic
ministrative boundaries, with the productive and assimilative services and social dimensions along with institutional addendum.
of ecosystem facilitating the flow of energy as well as material. The Sustainable development must be equitable, liveable and viable
resource base used by urban population is generally found away from (Tanguay et al., 2010). It is considered a weakness that sustainability
its place of consumption. Therefore, biophysical consequences of rapid has a loosely defined conceptual base (Pissourios, 2013), with lopsided
and uncontrolled urbanization are felt elsewhere. Urbanization is a progress in the multiple dimensions of sustainability, chiefly environ-
large proportion of the human population living in cities (Davis, 1955). mental aspects. It is claimed by many authors that definition of sus-
According to United Nations it is movement of people from rural to tainability transforms itself according to the target area of researchers
urban areas accompanied by three major trends (Mori and (Tanguay et al., 2010). According to Turcu (2013), there is generally no
Christodoulou, 2012): first, concentration of ‘metacities’, that is, con- universally accepted definition of sustainability. Sustainable develop-
urbations of more than 20 million people, in the developing countries of ment means achieving enduring development addressing human needs
Asia, Latin America and Africa (Habitat, 2006); second, presence of and improvement of the quality of life. At the same time, natural re-
more than half of world’s urban population in cities of less than sources should be utilized at a frequency and degree that can be sus-
500,000 inhabitants; and third, 95% of urban population growth in tained by regenerative capacity of the ecosystem.
cities of developing countries accounting for about 4 billion people Mori and Christodoulou (2012) supported nested hierarchical ap-
(Habitat, 2006; Mori and Christodoulou, 2012). India and China, in proach for biophysical, social and economic aspects of sustainability.
particular, are expected to see an increase of about one-third urban They argued that in the triple bottom line structure social, economic
population in the coming decade with rapid urbanization (Shen et al., and environmental considerations cannot be treated as parallel. Func-
2011). Following the aforementioned three trends, urban growth is tioning life-support system, social structures, institutions, and econo-
dynamically balanced between economies of scale and scope, along mies depend on each other to keep working. Though they have ex-
with diseconomies like environmental degradation and leakages plained this approach with a limited scope, it is important to mention
(Munda, 2006). Cities are confronted with the problem of trade-off that nested hierarchy approach considers biophysical limits of the earth
between positive and negative effects of urbanization with respect to as the final boundary which contains and consists of social and eco-
environmental, social and economic aspects (Mori and Christodoulou, nomic parameters (Fischer et al., 2007).
2012). As cities grow anthropogenic assets accumulate while natural Sustainable development definition gives rise to multiple inter-
assets suffer a corresponding decrease (Bithas and Christofakis, 2006). pretations (Tanguay et al., 2010), with differing emphasis on “what is

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: [email protected] (A.S. Raghubanshi).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2018.05.007
Received 8 October 2017; Received in revised form 19 February 2018; Accepted 3 May 2018
1470-160X/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
P. Verma, A.S. Raghubanshi Ecological Indicators 93 (2018) 282–291

Table 1
Definition of sustainability: Economic, Social and Environmental.
Theme Urban Sustainability References

Economic It should focus on man-made, natural, human and social capital Hamilton (2006)
Resource utilisation should not affect future income Moldan et al. (2012)
Intergenerational equity for resources
Economic activity should consider ecological basis
Intergenerational equity, distributional equity, optimal growth Anand and Sen (2000)

Social Should address the perpetuity of social values, identities, relationships and institutions Black, 2004; Moldan et al. (2012)
Common goals and social cohesion Gilbert et al. (1996)
Health, education, food, water, housing should be sustained for each individual Gilbert et al. (1996; Longoni and Cagliano (2015); Moldan et al.
(2012)
Actively support the maintenance and creation of skills as well as the capabilities of future Longoni and Cagliano (2015)
generations

Environmental Social and economic development should have sound environmental foundation
Natural resource management should have high priority Moldan et al. (2012)
Tipping points, thresholds (air, water pollution levels), sudden changes should be well Moldan et al. (2012); Booth et al. (2016)
understood

to be developed, what is to be sustained”, the relationship between by concrete indicators and some goals also have a “means of im-
environment and development and the temporal scale of such devel- plementation” which includes finance, trade, technology transfer, etc
opment. This means that in order to be sustainable, those resources (Le Blanck, 2015). For example, Goal 17 presents a cross-cutting theme
which can be utilized for development should be identified with their of targets which includes finance, trade, multi-national cooperation,
limitations (carrying capacity), along with the natural components or and capacity building to facilitate implementation of the other 16 SDGs.
limits that need to be protected or sustained respectively for the proper These indicators and targets are theoretically aimed to be universal but
functioning of ecosystems. Sustainability is a very “loosely” defined practically they are not applicable to every country (Hák et al., 2016).
term (Pissourios, 2013; Turcu, 2013). The broader concept ideally in- Goal 11 of SDG, making cities inclusive, safe resilient and sustainable,
cludes the triple bottom line, however, the concepts get more focused to addresses urban sustainability and includes the following cross-cutting
include mostly environmental sustainability in practice. Sustainability issues of affordable housing, sustainable transport, human settlement
is the most “challenging and controversial” issue with regard to its planning and management, green and public spaces, supporting posi-
“interpretation and application” and further when the term ‘sustain- tive economic, social and environmental links between urban, peri-
able’ combines with ‘development’, its focus changes to economic de- urban and rural areas and developing and implementing, in line with
velopment rather than overall sustainability (Lee and Huang, 2007). the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, a
When nations focus on economic development as the main aspect of “holistic disaster risk management at all levels” (United Nations, 2018).
sustainable development it inevitably drains the earth’s regenerative Indicators proposed to measures these targets include, but are not
and carrying capacity. Social influence on the concept of sustainability limited to, proportion of population living in slums, ratio of land con-
renders its measurement less objective, limited to a certain scope, with sumption rate to population growth rate, total and per capita ex-
a possible conflict of interests and manipulation by stakeholders. Fur- penditure on preservation of natural and cultural heritage, solid waste
ther, according to Moldan et al. (2012) social sustainability is the most collected, proportion of local governments that adopt disaster risk re-
important pillar of sustainable development and yet it is not fully clear duction strategies according to the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk
as to what it consists of. They question whether it includes growing, or Reduction 2015–2030, etc. (Inter-Agency and Expert Group in
not diminishing, inequality between people or nations, good health or Sustainable Development Goal Indicators, 2016). SDG targets have
failure of national institutions. Mori and Christodoulou (2012) have emerged from a long process of political negotiations. Sustainable
identified the triple bottom line as an abstract notion of biophysical, Development Services Network (2015) states that when these targets
economic and social elements, and intergenerational equity as the were assessed for their scientific robustness it was found that only 49
fundamental notions of sustainability and Turcu (2013) holds that de- targets out of 169 had a well-developed scientific background. 54% of
finition of sustainability is a normative choice rather than a concrete the targets needed to be more specific in terms of their scope while 17%
well-defined concept. According to Pupphachai and Zuidema (2017), needed significant improvement (Sustainable Development Services
sustainable development provides a more general direction for evalu- Network, 2015). Lack of implementation, conflict between targets and
ating and streamlining policies towards urban function and structure goals, and between international agreements and political foci, un-
rather than a precise definition. This very fact has resulted in the de- availability of data and non-quantifiable targets were the major
velopment of Sustainable Development Goals with 17 broad goals and weaknesses found in the assessment (Hák et al., 2016).
169 interconnected targets based on national priorities (United Nations, From Table 1 it is clear that all aspects of sustainability arise from
2015). Mori and Christodoulou (2012) argued that cities have social human activities, like resource use, pollution, need to understand a
and economic impacts on sustainability while they export their en- system’s capacity, intergenerational equity and tipping points among
vironmental externalities to areas out of their boundaries. This notion is many others. Since these activities are concentrated in urban areas
very important in assessing the sustainability of urban areas as they (Mehta et al., 2016), urban sustainability works as a cross-cutting issue
extend much beyond their administrative boundary. across the environmental, social and economic sustainability. Here
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and targets were adopted in space is used to define sustainability (Wang et al., 2016). The inflow of
2015 (Kumar et al., 2017b) for the next 15 years with the specific aim of materials and energy resources and generation of wastes should not
achieving a holistic approach towards sustainable development for both exceed the city’s capacity for a sustainable environment (Science for
developing as well as developed countries (Griggs et al., 2013). These Environment Policy, 2015). Economic activity, population growth, in-
goals are believed to be more integrated into policy than Millennium frastructure and services, pollution and waste should be internally
Development Goals (MDGs) as nations can prioritize the targets and limited in the system so that urban system may develop in harmony,
goals over national scales and local conditions (Le Blanck, 2015) while internally limiting negative impacts on the natural environment
working with internationally accepted norms. SDGs are accompanied (Hiremath et al., 2013). At this point, mention should be made about

283
P. Verma, A.S. Raghubanshi Ecological Indicators 93 (2018) 282–291

lack of urban boundary concept. Politically urban boundaries are de- of urban machinery. Dizdaroglu (2015) states that indicator-based
fined as countries, states, cities and various other terms. They have an sustainability assessment contributes in the following four ways, first,
advantage in terms of implementing policies and evaluating progress. by indicating the state of local sustainability, second, quantifying sus-
Measuring sustainability based on these boundaries is easy to under- tainability, third, by providing feedback of policies during im-
stand for decision-makers and stakeholders. Since urban areas extend plementation, and fourth, by finding the best policy measures for sus-
beyond their political or administrative boundaries, sustainability tainability.
measured for politically defined urban areas is irrelevant, arbitrary and
diminishes the ground reality (Fiala, 2008). However, importance of 2.1. Urban sustainability indicators
political and administrative boundaries persist, and cannot be chal-
lenged, because they provide an existing pathway for delivering sus- Newman and Jennings (2012) defined sustainable urban ecosystems
tainable policies to the society. For more information about models of as “ecosystems which are ethical, effective (healthy and equitable),
sustainability see Ali-Toudert and Ji (2017). zero-waste generating, self-regulating, resilient, self-renewing, flexible,
The Brundtland Commission defined sustainable development in its psychologically-fulfilling and cooperative” (Dizdaroglu, 2015). Sus-
landmark report ‘Our Common Future’ (WCED, 1987). According to it tainable urban development includes (1) improving quality of life
sustainable development means utilising resources in order to meet the through social interaction and easier access to wide range of services;
present needs of society as well as making efforts to use the resources in (2) minimizing energy consumption via green building design tech-
an optimum manner within their regeneration capacity. Moldan et al. nologies; (3) sustainable transport; (4) environmental protection and
(2012) gave three important aspects for defining sustainable develop- restoration (Dizdaroglu, 2015; Dizdaroglu & Didem, 2017; Jabareen,
ment, first, development is to first satisfy “certain basic human needs” 2006); (5) renewable energy and waste management (Stossel et al.
before higher needs can be fulfilled, second, such development should 2015); (6) green economies including clean technologies, green tax
be in harmony with nature, and third, sustainable development is a policies, green infrastructure, etc. (Zygiaris, 2013); (7) environmental
human-centric concept with intergenerational equity at its heart. While justice and equity through public health and welfare by natural re-
the Brundtland definition of sustainability leaves ample room for in- source management including affordable housing, efficient transport,
terpretation and growth, it is considered that human beings are the community participation into policy decisions, etc. (Wolch et al., 2014);
focal point in any discussion about sustainable development, and they (8) Preservation of public space, cultural and natural heritage (Fawzi
are entitled (Moldan et al., 2012) and responsible to create a “healthy Raed Ameen and Mourshed, 2016) and water resources including
and productive life in harmony with nature.” groundwater (Kumar et al., 2017a). Urban sustainability includes a
number of topics like biodiversity, energy, material balance, air pollu-
2. Sustainability indicators tion, heat island, noise pollution, etc. Sustainable urban indicators are
defined by Peter et al. (1998) as “physical, chemical, ecological or
Measuring progress towards sustainable or unsustainable develop- socio-economic measures” which can measure environmental or com-
ment requires quantifying phenomena which represent such progress. plex ecosystem variables (Dizdaroglu, 2015). While indicators help in
This is done through indicators (Cutaia, 2016). Indicators could be measuring progress towards sustainability, their application is not easy
anything from as simple as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita to across different cities or regions. Cities have different definitions of
measure economic development to complex such as immunization sustainability, indicators designed to measure sustainability for a par-
against infectious childhood diseases to measure health care. First set of ticular city cannot be used for a different city (Li Shen & Guo, 2014).
indicators were published in 1996 by the UN Department of Economics Apart from a spatially focused approach there is no special criteria for
and Social Affairs in the form of Driving force – State – Response (DSR) urban sustainability indicators that sets them apart from sustainable
framework (King, 2016). Indicators are required at all levels of results- development indicators.
oriented development goals. These indicators provide the necessary
information for measuring environmental, economic and social pro- 2.2. Scope of the review and bibliometric analysis
gress (Böhringer and Jochem, 2007). Indicators help towards achieving
sustainability targets and inform policymakers as well as the public Our aim was to analyse challenges in the application of sustain-
about the current state of the environment, their weaknesses and ability indicators in urban areas. In this review article, we have focused
strengths, and bring out the priority areas (Pupphachai and Zuidema, on research published in peer-reviewed journals in the last decade from
2017). Indicators not only validate a framework but also provide an the year 2006. We followed a three-step approach in our literature re-
insight into the phenomena being monitored (Guzm’n et al., 2017). view similar to Guzm’n et al. (2017) and Srivastava et al. (2017). A key
Simple indicators are those which measure individual phenomena such phrase search was performed to finalise the literature considered on the
as number of people living below poverty line and percentage green basis of whether they dealt with urban sustainability indicators, fol-
cover, while they combine to form a composite index based on different lowed by the second step, a reference analysis related to indicator ap-
weightage given to constituting indicators. Both help in measuring, plication and development, and the third step, identifying challenges
analysing and implementing sustainable practices, in policy making and and recommendations. We found that publications related with urban
public communication (Dizdaroglu, 2015; Singh et al., 2009). Sustain- sustainability indicators frequently had “urban”, “sustainable develop-
able development indicators must clearly differentiate between sus- ment”, “sustainability” and “indicators” in title, abstract or keywords.
tainable and unsustainable development and results should be clearly Based on this initial observation we searched for keywords of “urban
stated without any confusion for policy making (Lee and Huang, 2007). sustainability indicators” or “sustainable development indicators” in
Sustainability indicators can be a normative measure indicating the the title, abstract or keywords in the Scopus database on 3rd October
distance between current and baseline states (Huang et al., 1998). They 2017, since our focus was on understanding the indicators applied in an
reflect policy measures, and hence, policymakers and those affected by urban setup. The scope of the search included 341 documents per-
such policies are the best judge to predict the feasibility of im- taining to fields of environment, social, energy, engineering, business,
plementing such measures. Hence, indicators which receive political management and accounting, economics, agricultural and biological
support are liable to be more successful and accepted (Science for sciences, earth and planetary sciences, decision sciences and multi-
Environment Policy, 2015). Measuring sustainable development in disciplinary sciences. These broad fields of study were considered in the
urban areas remains the greatest challenge in implementing sustainable bibliometric analysis due to the cross-cutting nature urban sustain-
development in cities (Lee and Huang, 2007), which requires compar- ability. We further refined to those publications which had the word
able information about the social, economic and environmental aspects “urban” in their title, abstract or keywords for the next step. We found

284
P. Verma, A.S. Raghubanshi Ecological Indicators 93 (2018) 282–291

the reader with recent developments in this field.

2.3.1. General research content

This section gives a brief account about global or regional organi-
zations active in the formulating or utilising urban sustainability in-
dicators followed by general conclusions from some research work done
in the last decade. The World Bank categorises three types of indicators,
first, a large number of indicators covering various environmental
concerns comprise individual indicators; second, a small set of in-
dicators for evaluating environmental policies come under thematic
indicators; and third, systemic indicators where one indicator re-
presents a difficult issue (Dizdaroglu, 2015). A Global City Indicators
Program was started in 2007 by the World Bank which provides a
platform for cities to compare their indicators and share results and best
practices regarding sustainable urbanization (Zoeteman et al., 2016).
This program is run by the Global City Indicators Facility (GCIF) at
University of Toronto. The World Bank also provides an assessment
tool, called TRACE, which uses 28 main performance indicators to
measure the energy consumption of cities (Zoeteman et al., 2016).
World Resources Institute identified four categories of indicators. The
first category, called source indicators, is based on depletion of re-
Fig. 1. Composition of peer reviewed literature in 2006–2017 indexed in sources and degradation of ecological systems, like forest, marine, and
Scopus database according to article type.
freshwater; second, sink indicators measure the capacity of resources to
sustain emissions and waste; third, life support indicators assess change
in Earth’s ecosystems and biodiversity; fourth, human impact indicators
evaluate the effect of environmental degradation on human health and
well-being (Dizdaroglu, 2015). These indicators were specifically de-
signed to capture the anthropogenic and environmental interaction. It is
worthy to note that indicator-based literature and independent studies
are extensively available for European and North American countries at
the national level while they are hard to find for Asian and African
countries. Zoeteman et al. (2016) have given an account of indicator
studies limited to European cities. EUROSTAT developed a monitoring
framework called Urban Audit for European Union countries with the
help of national statistics organizations. It began in 1999 as a socio-
economic measuring tool collecting data at regular intervals and pub-
lishing the results in EUROSTATS’s Regional Yearbooks. Urban Audit
data informs about the sustainability of urban regions of the European
Fig. 2. Timeline of number of articles selected for our review published in the Union (Zoeteman et al., 2016). Other indicator studies include the
field of urban sustainability indicators 2006–2017 indexed in Scopus database. World Health Organization (WHO) European Healthy Cities Network
collecting data since 1998 which published a city fact sheet for 100
108 research articles, 14 conference proceedings, 10 review articles, 2 European cities for twelve health indicators; the European Green City
articles in press and 1 book out of a total of 138 research publications Index for thirty European cities evaluated thirty environmental in-
(Fig. 1). Research publications have peaked in the year 2012 with 22 dicators; the Covenant of Mayors on Climate Change, 2014, provides
publications, while they were only 3 and 13 in 2006 and 2015 re- greenhouse gas emissions and reduction targets set by participating
spectively. Research in this field has increased in the last decade (Fig. 2) cities (Zoeteman et al., 2016).
warranting a streamlining of its direction. Second, we did a reference Lee and Huang (2007) proposed a set of 51 indicators for Taipei
cross-check and found some of the older reports and other works from sustainability to assess which public policies lead towards sustainable
different agencies showing important developments which we included development. They calculated composite indicator values for four
for a proper explanation of concepts. Third, analysis of literature was themes of economic, social, environmental and institutional categories.
done to find out the specific issues related to development and appli- Their indicator set belongs to weak sustainability framework and they
cation of urban sustainability indicators. Only those papers were se- have highlighted the method through which balance can be reached
lected for review which were closely related to the urban sustainability between anthropogenic and ecological aspects of indicators. Urban
indicators and not focussed on a particular urban sustainability theme. areas are characterised by a concentration of built areas. (Xing et al,
Duplication of ideas was avoided to include maximum aspects of recent 2009) identified an urban sustainability model based on monetisation
studies and trends in urban sustainability indicator research. of the buildings in an urban area. The aim was to determine sustain-
ability by analysing and internalising the cost of environmental, social
and economic externalities. Their study was focussed on the building
2.3. State of research and urban planning cycle. On the other hand, a study with a new
perspective by Sakieh & Salmanmahiny (2016) compared the urban
There are several organizations involved in developing and applying growth to cancer spread in human bodies. They argued that urban cores
indicator-based sustainability frameworks. From a review of current behaved like cancer cells that constitute a neoplasm or a tumour. They
state of research, the following account about urban sustainability in- have given arguments comparing the spread of cancer cells with urban
dicator research and methodologies being employed in such research cores stating that like cancer cells, priority needs to be to restrain the
has been given. This section is divided into general research content larger urban cores with more physical and population size as they have
and recent trends in research methodologies. The focus is to familiarize bigger and extended ecological footprint. While the smaller cancer

285
P. Verma, A.S. Raghubanshi Ecological Indicators 93 (2018) 282–291

tumours have more potential for growth they can be mitigated more three areas of airborne particulate matter concentration, biomass
easily than their larger counterparts. Same holds for the urban cores. burning and coastal chlorophyll trends. For airborne particulate matter
They analysed the suitability of different landscapes for urban growth, concentration, they created an exposure index from human health
rangeland development and afforestation under three scenarios of re- policy perspective using population weighting. For example, population
stricted urban growth with more potential for afforestation, rangeland weighting gave more weight to PM2.5 concentration in more populated
protection scenario with more potential for urban growth and a his- areas. They used Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer/
torical growth scenario where the whole of the study area was available Multiangle Imaging Spectro-Radiometer (MODIS/MISR) data for
for urban growth. aerosol optical depth measurements and Global Rural-Urban Mapping
Shen et al. (2011) proposed an International Urban Sustainability Project for applying population weighting to spatial grids. Their main
Indicators List (IUSIL) after examining nine different practices followed methodological achievement was that they used satellite imagery to
in some cities. They concluded that sharing knowledge about different create sustainability indicators thereby proving the relevance of using
practices leads to the selection of indicators and communication of satellite data in urban sustainability measurement. Salvati and Carlucci
comparative results. Their main drawback was that they did not ex- (2014) applied a Factor Weighting Model to create an index of sus-
amine these practices against their implementation in these cities. tainability. The methodology followed to select indicators included
Panda et al. (2016) developed a composite Urban Social Sustainability seven steps for variable selection, data transformation, multivariate
Index (USSI) under four themes of sustainability viz. economic, social, analysis, weight derivation, indicators composition and descriptive
environmental and institutional. Turcu, (2013) emphasised the im- statistical analysis of the derived index. They also conducted a PCA to
portance of incorporating local perspective by integrating science and find out the factors affecting socioeconomic and environmental condi-
public as policy tools. Such indicators may reflect a more ‘truthful tions for 8100 municipalities of Italy. They further compared their
image of local (un)sustainability’. But the methodology by Turcu, derived index with target indicator values for Italy. Cook et al. (2017)
(2013) would be hard to reproduce by local governments or public. developed a simple index applying two different but complementary
Babu and Datta (2015) reported that there exists a bidirectional asso- approaches. They used a proximity-to-target approach in case of
ciation between developmental and environmental aspects in the de- quantifiable targets and, where trend-based targets were present, a
veloping countries that are more dependent upon natural resources. traffic lights approach was applied. Basically, they quantified progress
They have shown that a 1% growth in life expectancy contributed to towards or away from accepted targets of sustainability. Since there is
$10291.46 increase in GDP, whereas 1% rise in GDP resulted in mar- no limit for trend-based indicators, a reference point was found out
ginal growth in life-expectancy and same was the case for GDP and wherever data was available and a traffic lights approach used, where
adult literacy rate. This meant that growth in GDP did not immediately red meant deteriorating, green meant improving, yellow meant little or
translated into health and education improvements. GDP does not no change and grey meant data not available. A set of 23 indicators
consider the diseconomies like deforestation, water quality degrada- were selected from 30 indicators against five key criteria of policy re-
tion, soil erosion, biodiversity loss, air pollution, depletion of fisheries levance, utility, soundness, interpretability and data availability and
stock, etc. They have argued in support of eaNDP (environmentally quality. In a recent study Luan et al. (2017) gave a comprehensive index
adjusted net domestic product). based on sensitivity analysis of 18 indicators taken from an existing
index. They applied the extended Fourier amplitude sensitivity test
2.3.2. Recent trends in research methodology (EFAST) model to quantitatively determine the importance of sustain-
Methodologies applied in various works have been cited here with a able development indicators. Their study brings out the fact that there
brief explanation to highlight the wide spectrum of urban sustainability is a need to simplify the sustainable development evaluation process
indicator development and applied research. We found that multi- because of over-population of such indicators.
variate statistics like factor analysis (Huang et al., 2015) and Principal
Component Analysis (PCA) (Huang et al., 2015; Mascarenhas et al., 3. Discussion
2015) were one of the most useful methodologies (see Supplementary
Table S. 2). Recent developments in the application of earth observation This over-population has created a need to identify the challenges
data analysis are becoming increasingly advantageous in indicator faced in indicator research so as to distil its content based on relevance
studies (Salvati and Carlucci, 2014; Huang et al., 2015). Zhang et al. and applicability. A number of authors have identified challenges faced
(2010) applied principal component analysis (PCA) to determine the in developing, selecting and implementing sustainability indicators in
most useful indicator sets. Their basic premise to assess indicators was general (Hák et al., 2016; Lee and Huang, 2007; Moldan et al., 2012;
that urban land use is driven by several factors like social and eco- Mori and Christodoulou, 2012; Tanguay et al., 2010; Turcu, 2013).
nomic, the aim is to find out the most important components from Since urbanization has become one of the most important issues which
available indicators. They reported that following indicator variables defines the human relationship with the ecosystem, we have focussed
formed the first three factors of PCA: Factor 1 – Gross Domestic Product on the urban context of sustainability indicators. The indicator selec-
(GDP), GDP per unit area of land, investment devoted to environmental tion, baseline and target determination, evaluation and review cycle for
pollution treatment, total land area and retail sales of consumer goods applying urban sustainability indicators in a top-down framework is
per unit area of land; Factor 2 – Proportion of construction land cover in described in Fig. 3.
the built-up urban area and road area per capita; Factor 3 – Proportion
of industrial solid wastes that are treated and reused and population 3.1. Challenges and opportunities
density. (Sakieh & Salmanmahiny (2016) validated their morphological
cancer analogy by using Multi-Criteria Evaluation, SLEUTH land use After extensive review of literature, we identified external and in-
change model and performance metrics to compare cancer growth and ternal challenges as two broad categories through which sustainable
urbanization pattern. Panda et al. (2016) used normalization of data development indicators can be analysed. This grouping was aimed at
values, weighting through expert survey and confirmation through simplifying the most common issues met during development and im-
factor analysis, determining directionality of the scores and linear ag- plementation of indicators. Internal challenges are the problem in-
gregation of the thematic index in computing USSI. Their use of mul- herent in indicators due to their development methodology. Their
tivariate statistics to test their model was in resonance with suggestions causes can include, but are not limited to, methodology used for de-
of Huang et al. (2015) for indicator development and similar to the veloping indicators, weighting methods, complexity or over-simplicity
methodology followed by Salvati and Carlucci (2014). in measurement and lack of theoretical base.
De Sherbinin et al. (2014) developed a set of indicators focussing on External challenges are the issues which prevent implementation of

286
P. Verma, A.S. Raghubanshi Ecological Indicators 93 (2018) 282–291

Fig. 3. Diagram showing the steps involved in top-down approach in an indicator framework along with constituents of each step.

sustainability indicator frameworks. This is the external resistance that framework. It is determined by government policy, government de-
makes selection, interpretation and application of indicators compli- partments involved, the scope of urban boundary, time period and
cated and useless (Moldan et al., 2012). These are characterized by lack whether updated urban conditions (Liyin Shen & Zhou, 2014) are taken
of data, policy lethargy or unwillingness on part of the government to under consideration. Urban conditions refer to the local, regional and
implement the indicators, lack of consensus on what constitutes stan- global interactions in an urban setting which give it its unique identity.
dard indicators and lack of comparative analysis across disciplines and Urban setting defines the relationship between indicators and urbani-
cities. These are the problems that we face during implementation and zation. Stossel et al. (2015) stated that urban sustainability assessments
incorporation of indicators in decision use. mostly focus on environment within city boundaries. Zhou et al., (2015)
cited the importance of public departments in creating indicators as
they were the ones that had to implement and report progress about
3.1.1. Internal challenges
sustainable development. They proposed a responsibility-based method
The way sustainable development indicators are developed is a
in which roles and scope of all concerned public departments were
matter of much debate (Turcu, 2013). Development of indicators is
taken into account.
many times backed up by unsound methodologies (Mori and
Setting goals (B) is the second step of indicator development.
Christodoulou, 2012). Top-down or expert-led and bottom-up or ci-
Stakeholder participation is the principal activity in this step. While
tizen-led models are well documented. Bottom-up approaches are sui-
Huang et al. (1998) and Turcu (2013) pointed out that presently it lacks
table for local or regional level studies while unsuitable for global
integration of citizen-led and expert-led approaches, (Liu et al. (2017),
studies where top-down methods are more applicable. A list of chal-
Mascarenhas et al. (2015), Shen et al. (2011) and Tanguay et al. (2010)
lenges innately present in indicators (internal) is given in
stated that due to confusion and ambiguity in the definition of sus-
Supplementary Table S. 1. Here we have discussed the issues and op-
tainability there are no universal criteria for sustainability goals. Sta-
portunities of sustainability indicators in urban settings according to
keholder participation is needed in setting goals or outcomes. Goals
the steps of indicator framework identified in Fig. 3. Internal challenges
should be identified according to some universal criteria and based
are encountered in steps (A) to (E) of the proposed indicator frame-
upon local conditions. This step is instrumental in determining the type
work.
of indicator selected according to the urban characteristic. For example,
Preliminary assessment (A) is most important before setting the
poverty reduction might be a universal criterion but the percentage
stage for an indicator framework. This is the first step in indicator

287
P. Verma, A.S. Raghubanshi Ecological Indicators 93 (2018) 282–291

Fig. 4. Number of challenges and opportunities of each step in the indicator framework identified for 2006–2017 (refer Supplementary material Tables S. 1 and S. 2).

reduction of people living below poverty line would be determined by most recurring indicator in their respective category. Indicator-based
the realistic local conditions and capacity. indices or composite indices constitute combination of different in-
It was found that the indicator research is bent more towards their dicators. Choice or selection of indicators and weighting are the biggest
selection methodology (Fig. 4). Indicator selection (C) is an iterative criticisms levelled against composite indices (Tran, 2016). Indices like
process which involves setting the selection criteria, identifying reliable Dashboard of Sustainability, Environmental Sustainability Index, En-
(Huang et al., 1998) indicators with stakeholder participation as an vironmental Vulnerability Index, Environmental Policy Index, Well-
important component. Since most of the research has focussed on this being Index, Living Planet Index, Human Development Index and City
aspect a large number of indicators have been identified with as many Development Index are examples of composite indices (Mori and
numbers of selection criteria and no universally accepted approach. Christodoulou, 2012). But these are plagued by the considerations of
Tanguay et al. (2010) suggested that we may accept the most cited how much importance or weight is given to constituent indicators
indicator as the most relevant one. This approach has benefits as well as (Pissourios, 2013). Becker et al., (1987) conducted a study in the United
drawbacks. The most cited indicator means that it should be simple, States and reported that out of the selected cities 134 could be ranked
easy to measure with available data (Kumar et al., 2015), but it also first, 150 could be ranked last and 59 could be ranked first or last,
means that its simplicity might compromise its ability to measure sus- depending on the weighting scheme (Becker et al., 1987).
tainability dimensions in depth. Further, they proposed that the index Welfare indices measure welfare contributions in common mone-
should cover all the components of sustainable development and cer- tary units. They provide aggregation of individual indicators using
tain predetermined categories which occur pertinently, as given in their monetary units of measurement, but Pissourios (2013) notes that they
study, and the simplest index should be chosen for easier data collec- lack sound theoretical foundations and even slight changes in weighting
tion, analysis and dissemination. method of consumption spending can substantially change the overall
For measuring sustainability, a conceptual framework is necessary value of the index. The selection of indicators determines its aggrega-
to follow the most appropriate selection criteria for indicators. In order tion and the different choices made during aggregation will produce
to actualize their recommendations, Tanguay et al. (2010) proposed a different outcomes (Pissourios, 2013). Weights are target group specific
SuBSelec strategy for sustainable development indicators. They com- because policymakers, citizens, experts and businesses will have dif-
pared whether selecting indicators cited at least four times and re- ferent priorities for different issues, therefore how much an indicator
presenting more categories of sustainable development was better than contributes to the final index value depends on the subjective under-
choosing indicators cited more than four times but representing less standing of different stakeholders (Ahvenniemi et al., 2017). Indicator
number of categories. The themes of sustainable development were selection largely consists of selecting the best indicator according to the
determined by them in order to incorporate a sound conceptual fra- objective of development plans, which is quite reasonable. But there is
mework in their strategy. They further applied the following three lack of any research on how such objectives can be universally applied
conditions for selecting indicators, first, parsimony in the indicators according to urbanization characteristics and hence there is absence of
with easy understanding and usefulness, second, coverage of all cate- any universal indicators according to those urban characteristics. This is
gories of sustainable development, and third, retaining indicators on a dilemma of the trade-off between universal applicability and re-
which consensus exists in literature for a sound conceptual under- levance of indicators.
standing. They found that it is better to use lesser number of indicators. Setting baseline (D) is a neglected area of indicator assessments.
Six sustainable development categories out of twenty, which were not Socio-economic data is usually collected through national or regional
represented by the selected indicators were included by adding the sampling surveys on a regular basis while scientific data is collected

288
P. Verma, A.S. Raghubanshi Ecological Indicators 93 (2018) 282–291

through continuous monitoring of environmental parameters. This data steps are not much researched either and we were not able to identify
needs to be used to create a baseline for gap analysis. challenges in respect to these steps. In a top-down approach, the gov-
Selecting targets (E) requires scientific input to determine the sus- ernments have the administrative machinery and will to implement
tainability requirements and stakeholder discussion to determine these through publications, public information dissemination as well as
practicality of targets. Selection criteria needs to be set in this step. This numerous government departments to sustain the framework.
is also an aspect which requires more research to bring out definite Decision use of indicator assessments (Applying findings, I) is rare.
threshold values (Fig. 4). Mori and Christodoulou (2012) called for This aspect has been neglected and it is one of the emerging topics in
absolute thresholds to reduce the confusion between elements of the indicator assessments.
triple bottom line and indicate the level up to which the system can Unclear methodologies might give rise to sustainability indices with
function sustainably. Cook et al., (2017) seconded their opinion and unsustainable issues (Turcu, 2013). Development of indices continues
included expert judgement and nation-specific analysis for a holistic to be a search for technical and scientific solutions rather than an an-
assessment of environmental indicators. Thresholds are scientifically swer for political and social challenges which includes ethical and
determined or policy-based targets beyond which the system is con- moral dimension (Turcu, 2013). Thus, steps D, G, H, I and J need better
sidered unsustainable. Threshold hypothesis is basically an ecological analysis and inclusion in urban sustainability assessments. The balance
economics measurement concept. Basic human needs must be met be- between political and social with scientific characteristics of sustain-
fore holistic development is targeted (Smith et al., 2013) but in practice ability indices need to be achieved.
even after satisfying basic human needs such development does not Generally, a list of criteria for indicator selection and development
take place. When macroeconomic systems exceed beyond a certain is easily prepared while the task of such indicator frameworks is hard to
point the marginal benefits of further growth are offset by the marginal accomplish (Ramos & Caeiro, 2010). Universal acceptability and in-
cost of externalities (Pissourios, 2013). As mentioned before, indicators fluence on policy making are lacking in all indicator sets (Mori and
measuring these are called welfare indices which determine the benefits Christodoulou, 2012). Further, extensive and large-scale studies, such
and costs of growth. One of the earliest indices, Daly and Cobb’s Index as European Common Indicators developed for European Union, are
of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) was developed in 1989. It rare and very expensive (Pissourios, 2013). A very large amount of data
studied the trend of GDP and ISEW values and concluded that economic has to be gathered which is usually repeated on a timely basis. Such
growth is beneficial up to a certain point only, beyond that it becomes reports quickly lose their relevance with time. A lot of indicator sets are
detrimental (Pissourios, 2013). Lack of scientifically determined developed with the aim of providing policy directions for the public and
thresholds has been pointed out by many authors (Marletto and government bodies but their sheer numbers and complexity involved in
Mameli, 2012; Moldan et al., 2012; Mori and Christodoulou, 2012; measurement makes them unattractive for real use (Pissourios, 2013).
Shen et al., 2011; Shen and Zhou, 2014). As can be seen from Fig. 4, In the United States a study by Gahin et al., (2003), reported that five
selection of an appropriate target is an important challenge to be indicator projects resulted in intangible benefits like sustainability, in-
overcome for assessing urban sustainability. creased community dialogue, a better understanding of community is-
sues, while the real benefits like policy making and implementation of
3.1.2. External challenge results were rare (Gahin et al., 2003). Pissourios (2013) holds that
Tanguay et al. (2010) stated that sustainable development has a publication of such studies seldom makes any policy decision or mo-
broad definition which gives rise to multiple interpretations. Mori and bilize public towards sustainability. Studies that cover a broad range of
Christodoulou, (2012) associated the same reason to indicators’ weak- themes cannot do justice to details which are necessary from a policy-
ness and further added the diversity of purposes for measuring sus- making perspective. Such studies cannot link unsustainability to its
tainability and the confusion of terminology, data and methods applied causes as they are not linked to problems or focussed on certain issues
in measurement as the major causes. External challenges emerge during (Pissourios, 2013).
steps (F) to (J) of the indicator framework (Fig. 3). Sustainability indicators should have following simple criteria like
Application (F) of indicators to gather real information is the most easy calculation, data availability, commensurability, scientifically de-
important step of indicator frameworks. It involves the collection of termined thresholds, with easy penetrability into policy decisions. This
data and results by applying the indicators. Application of indicators is is in accord with the Bellagio principles for assessing progress towards
to collect data and results, while application of findings is to implement sustainable development (Council, 0000). In this section, we discuss
the information generated from indicators to bridge the gap between recommendations from various studies for urban sustainability in-
sustainable and unsustainable development. Application of indicators dicators.
has the biggest crucial challenge of data unavailability. Because of the
paucity of data, even the most logical and scientific indicators frame- 3.2. Outcomes
work would fail. According to Moldan et al. (2012), even if data is
available, selection, interpretation and use of indicators is the main Nations have developed indicators according to their local or na-
difficulty. But as data availability has been identified as a challenge by tional priorities (Shen et al., 2011). While urban sustainability perfor-
many authors, we can conclude that it is a very frequent external mance is measured across the world, there is no single set of indicators
challenge while applying indicators in actual situation. The issue of that can be used for all the urban areas (Shen et al., 2011). Common
commensurability limits the use of indicators and results in another indicators are needed for comparison and ranking between cities and
external resistance in the form of lack of comparison between case countries. It is important to consider that sustainability indicators serve
studies. as a means to an end and are not in themselves the goal of achieving
Evaluation (G) of indicator results include performing sensitivity sustainability.
analysis and identifying short-comings to modify the indicator assess- Shen and Zhou (2014) identified five principal criteria for sustain-
ment framework. This is also a neglected step of indicator framework ability indicator selection, they are, the scope of sustainable develop-
studies (Fig. 4). In an interesting study, Ramos & Caeiro (2010) cited ment dimension, coherence for strategy, public participation, focus on
the importance of meta-analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of in- sustainable development goals and consistency regarding meaning and
dicators. They said that very few indicator frameworks implemented dimensions of sustainable development indicators. A list of major sug-
had provision for meta-analysis. In the absence of such an evaluation gestions come across after a review of recent literature is given in
(Li et al., 2009), the credibility and long-term sustainability of the in- Supplementary material Table S. 2.
dicator frameworks is jeopardised. Tanguay et al. (2010) warned against using Pressure-State-Response
Reporting findings (H) and Sustaining the indicator (J) framework models and their derivatives like Driving-Force-Pressure-State-Impact-

289
P. Verma, A.S. Raghubanshi Ecological Indicators 93 (2018) 282–291

Reaction models. They involve multiplying the number of indicators thresholds and a conceptual framework are needed as preliminary
four or five times as each category of sustainable development must considerations for indicator-based evaluation of urban sustainability.
consist of pressure, state and response indicators. The PSR model is While setting a Baseline and finding thresholds (step D), Evaluation of
based on cause and effect relationship between the origin of change and indicator framework after implementation including sensitivity analysis
their consequences. Social and economic Drivers, like population and modifying the framework (step G), and Application of findings in
growth, exert Pressure on the environment which changes its State such the real world in order to move towards sustainability (step I), are the
as biodiversity or resource availability and leading to Impacts on three emerging issues in indicator-based sustainability research.
human or ecological matrix and anthropogenic Reaction on the Drivers
of change (EEA, 1999). The PSR and its derivative were more en- Appendix A. Supplementary data
vironmentally focused but they did not address the complex inter-lin-
kages between drivers, state and response, and could not highlight the Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the
relationship between indicators and policy relevance (U.N. Department online version, at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2018.05.007.
of Economics, 2007). Thus, the PSR model was abandoned from 2006
(Tanguay et al., 2010) and replaced with a theme/sub-theme based References
flexible model by Commission for Sustainable Development for sus-
tainability indicators (U.N. Department of Economics, 2007). Ahvenniemi, H., Huovila, A., Pinto-Seppä, I., Airaksinen, M., 2017. What are the differ-
According to Tanguay et al. (2010) environmental and macro- ences between sustainable and smart cities? Cities 60, 234–245.
Ali-Toudert, F., Ji, L., 2017. Modeling and measuring urban sustainability in multi-cri-
economic indicators are theoretically and methodologically sounder teria based systems—a challenging issue. Ecol. Ind. 73, 597–611.
while quality of life, welfare and sustainability indicators are supported Anand, S., Sen, A., 2000. Human development and economic sustainability. World Dev.
by weak theoretical foundations which leads to methodological incon- 28, 2029–2049.
Babu, S.S., Datta, S.K., 2015. Revisiting the link between socio-economic development
sistencies. By applying their selection criteria Tanguay et al. (2010) and environmental status indicators—focus on panel data. Environ. Dev. Sustain. 17,
may have been able to overcome this short-coming. Regarding targets, 567–586.
Hák et al. (2016) stated that they should be measurable and accessible Becker, R.A., Denby, L., McGill, R., Wilks, A.R., 1987. Analysis of data from the Places
Rated Almanac. Am. Statis. 41, 169–186.
by means of indicators (see Supplementary material Table S. 2).
Bithas, K.P., Christofakis, M., 2006. Environmentally sustainable cities. Critical review
Dizdaroglu (2015) stated that indicators should be relevant for making and operational conditions. Sustain. Dev. 14, 177–189.
policy decisions, should be analytically sound and measurable. This Black, A.W., 2004. The quest for sustainable, healthy communities. Aust. J. Environ.
Educ. 20, 33–44.
discussion about sustainability indicators brings forth three important
Böhringer, C., Jochem, P.E., 2007. Measuring the immeasurable—a survey of sustain-
criteria from the challenges mentioned in Supplementary material ability indices. Ecol. Econ. 63, 1–8.
Table S. 1 and recommendation given in Supplementary material Table Booth, E.G., Zipper, S.C., Loheide, S.P., Kucharik, C.J., 2016. Is groundwater recharge
S. 2, that is, application of indicators and subsequent assessment of always serving us well? Water supply provisioning, crop production, and flood at-
tenuation in conflict in Wisconsin, USA. Ecosyst. Serv. 21, 153–165. http://dx.doi.
urban sustainability will be most influenced by: org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2016.08.007.
Cook, D., Saviolidis, N.M., Davíðsdóttir, B., Jóhannsdóttir, L., Ólafsson, S., 2017.
1. Data availability Measuring countries’ environmental sustainability performance—the development of
a nation-specific indicator set. Ecol. Ind. 74, 463–478.
2. Target/sustainability threshold (scientifically determined or policy Council, E., Bellagio principles: guidelines for the practical assessment of progress toward
goal based) sustainable development, Implementing sustainable development: summaries of
3. A conceptual framework for indicator selection special focus reports prepared for the Rio+ 5 forum, p. 3.
Cutaia, F. 2016. The Use of Landscape Indicators in Environmental Assessment BT
-Strategic Environmental Assessment: Integrating Landscape and Urban Planning. In:
Other challenges will have a significant impact on sustainability F. Cutaia (Ed.). Cham: Springer International Publishing. pp. 29–43. doi: 10.1007/
assessment but the above-mentioned aspects can be considered as the 978-3-319-42132-2_4.
Davis, K., 1955. The origin and growth of urbanization in the world. Am. J. Sociol. 60,
first step to determine simple, or crude, sustainability assessment fra- 429–437.
mework of a city. The theme/sub-theme-based categorisation of in- De Sherbinin, A., Levy, M.A., Zell, E., Weber, S., Jaiteh, M., 2014. Using satellite data to
dicators across the triple bottom line or four dimensions of economic, develop environmental indicators. Environ. Res. Lett. 9, 084013.
Dizdaroglu, D., 2015. Developing micro-level urban ecosystem indicators for sustain-
social, environmental and institutional sustainability is the most com-
ability assessment. Environ. Impact Assess. Rev. 54, 119–124.
monly practiced methodology. According to UN CSD (U.N. Department Dizdaroglu, D., Didem, 2017. The role of indicator-based sustainability assessment in
of Economics, 2007) issue and theme-based indicator frameworks are policy and the decision-making process: a review and outlook. Sustainability 9 (6),
adopted by most countries for national, regional or theme-based sus- 1018. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/su9061018.
EEA, E., 1999. Environmental indicators: typology and overview. European
tainability assessments as they are easier to understand and present, Environmental.
and incorporate into the policy framework. It is interesting to note that Fawzi Raed Ameen, M., & Mourshed, M., 2016. Environmental, Social and Economic
in our literature review, we were not able to find any work which Challenges for Urban Development : Stakeholder’s Perception in a Developing
Economy, (July).
comprehensively dealt with the relationship of indicators with stage, Fiala, N., 2008. Measuring sustainability: why the ecological footprint is bad economics
level or characteristic of urban areas. This issue has been addressed to a and bad environmental science. Ecol. Econ. 67, 519–525.
certain extent in SDGs by creating a flexible, national priority-based Fischer, J., Manning, A.D., Steffen, W., Rose, D.B., Daniell, K., Felton, A., ... Wade, A.,
2007. Mind the sustainability gap. Trends Ecol. Evol. 22 (12), 621–624. http://dx.
choice of targets but it still lacks the comprehensiveness required to doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2007.08.016.
capture the urbanization types and levels. Gahin, R., Veleva, V., Hart, M., 2003. Do indicators help create sustainable communities?
Local Environ. 8, 661–666.
Gilbert, R., Stevenson, D., Girardet, H., Stren, R., 1996. Making Cities Work. Earthscan,
4. Conclusion London.
Griggs, D., Stafford-Smith, M., Gaffney, O., Rockström, J., Öhman, M.C., Shyamsundar,
There is a large literature on indicator application in sustainable P., ... Noble, I., 2013. Policy: sustainable development goals for people and planet.
Nature 495 (7441), 305–307. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/495305a.
development. Due to the overpopulation of indicators, there is a need to
Guzm'n, P.C., Roders, A.R.P., Colenbrander, B.J.F., 2017. Measuring links between cul-
bring out the most important and relevant ones. But in order to select tural heritage management and sustainable urban development: an overview of
such a simplified indicator system, the major challenges in application global monitoring tools. Cities 60, 192–201. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2016.
and development have to be resolved. This work is a step forward in 09.005.
Habitat, U., 2006. State of the World’s Cities. The Millennium Development Goals and
that direction. We determined the steps involved in indicator frame- Urban Sustainability. Earthscan, London.
work in order to identify the challenges associated with each step. The Hák, T., Janoušková, S., Moldan, B., 2016. Sustainable development goals: a need for
major challenges and opportunities were then analysed in respect of relevant indicators. Ecol. Ind. 60, 565–573.
Hamilton, K., 2006. Where is the wealth of nations? Measuring capital for the 21st
each step in the framework. We found that data availability, target or

290
P. Verma, A.S. Raghubanshi Ecological Indicators 93 (2018) 282–291

century. World Bank Publications. Ramos, T.B., Caeiro, S., 2010. Meta-performance evaluation of sustainability indicators.
Hiremath, R.B., Balachandra, P., Kumar, B., Bansode, S.S., Murali, J., 2013. Indicator- Ecol. Ind. 10 (2), 157–166. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2009.04.008.
based urban sustainability—a review. Energy Sustain. Dev. 17, 555–563. Sakieh, Y., Salmanmahiny, A., 2016. Treating a cancerous landscape: implications from
Huang, L., Wu, J., Yan, L., 2015. Defining and measuring urban sustainability: a review of medical sciences for urban and landscape planning in a developing region. Habitat
indicators. Landsc. Ecol. 30, 1175–1193. Int. 55, 180–191. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2016.03.008.
Huang, S.-L., Wong, J.-H., Chen, T.-C., 1998. A framework of indicator system for mea- Salvati, L., Carlucci, M., 2014. A composite index of sustainable development at the local
suring Taipei's urban sustainability. Landsc. Urban Plann. 42, 15–27. scale: Italy as a case study. Ecol. Ind. 43, 162–171.
Inter-Agency and Expert Group in Sustainable Development Goal Indicators, 2016. Final Science for Environment Policy, 2015. Indicators for sustainable cities. Eur. Commission
list of proposed Sustainable Development Goal indicators. Report of the Inter-Agency (12), 1–189. http://dx.doi.org/10.2779/61700.
and Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal Indicators, Annex IV. https:// Shen, L., Guo, X., 2014. Spatial quantification and pattern analysis of urban sustainability
doi.org/ISBN 978 92 4 150848 3. based on a subjectively weighted indicator model: a case study in the city of
Jabareen, Y.R., 2006. Sustainable urban forms: their typologies, models, and concepts. J. Saskatoon, SK, Canada. Appl. Geogr. 53, 117–127. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.
Plann. Educ. Res. 26 (1), 38–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0739456X05285119. apgeog.2014.06.001.
King, L.O., 2016. Functional sustainability indicators. Ecol. Ind. 66, 121–131. http://dx. Shen, L.-Y., Ochoa, J.J., Shah, M.N., Zhang, X., 2011. The application of urban sustain-
doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2016.01.027. ability indicators–a comparison between various practices. Habitat Int. 35, 17–29.
Kumar, P., Bansod, B.K.S., Debnath, S.K., Thakur, P.K., Ghanshyam, C., 2015. Index-based Shen, L., Zhou, J., 2014. Examining the effectiveness of indicators for guiding sustainable
groundwater vulnerability mapping models using hydrogeological settings: a critical urbanization in China. Habitat Int. 44, 111–120.
evaluation. Environ. Impact Assess. Rev. 51, 38–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. Singh, R.K., Murty, H.R., Gupta, S.K., Dikshit, A.K., 2009. An overview of sustainability
eiar.2015.02.001. assessment methodologies. Ecol. Indic. 9, 189–212.
Kumar, P., Thakur, P.K., Bansod, B.K., Debnath, S.K., 2017a. Multi-criteria evaluation of Smith, L.M., Case, J.L., Smith, H.M., Harwell, L.C., Summers, J., 2013. Relating ecosystem
hydro-geological and anthropogenic parameters for the groundwater vulnerability services to domains of human well-being: foundation for a US index. Ecol. Ind. 28,
assessment. Environ. Monit. Assess. 189 (11). http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10661- 79–90.
017-6267-x. Srivastava, P., Singh, R., Tripathi, S., Singh, P., Singh, S., Singh, H., Mishra, P.K., 2017.
Kumar, P., Thakur, P.K., Bansod, B.K.S., Debnath, S.K., 2017b. Groundwater: a regional Soil carbon dynamics under changing climate—a research transition from absolute to
resource and a regional governance. Environ. Dev. Sustain. 1–19. http://dx.doi.org/ relative roles of inorganic nitrogen pools and associated microbial processes: a re-
10.1007/s10668-017-9931-y. view. Pedosphere 27 (5), 792–806. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1002-0160(17)
Le Blanck, D., 2015. The sustainable development goals as a network of targets. Monit. 60488-0.
Eval. NEWS 1 (141), 1–4. http://www.un.org/esa/desa/papers/2015/wp141_2015. Stossel, Z., Kissinger, M., Meir, A., 2015. Measuring the biophysical dimension of urban
pdf. sustainability. Ecol. Econ. 120, 153–163. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.
Lee, Y.-J., Huang, C.-M., 2007. Sustainability index for Taipei. Environ. Impact Assess. 2015.10.010.
Rev. 27, 505–521. Sustainable Development Services Network, 2015. Indicators and a Monitoring
Li, F., Liu, X., Hu, D., Wang, R., Yang, W., Li, D., Zhao, D., 2009. Measurement indicators Framework for the Sustainable Development Goals Launching a data revolution for
and an evaluation approach for assessing urban sustainable development: a case the SDGs, (Version 6).
study for China's Jining City. Landscape Urban Plann. 90, 134–142. Tanguay, G.A., Rajaonson, J., Lefebvre, J.-F., Lanoie, P., 2010. Measuring the sustain-
Liu, G., Brown, M.T., Casazza, M., 2017. Enhancing the sustainability narrative through a ability of cities: an analysis of the use of local indicators. Ecol. Ind. 10, 407–418.
deeper understanding of sustainable development indicators. Sustainability Tran, L., 2016. An interactive method to select a set of sustainable urban development
(Switzerland) 9 (6). http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/su9061078. indicators. Ecol. Ind. 61, 418–427.
Longoni, A., Cagliano, R., 2015. Environmental and social sustainability priorities: their Turcu, C., 2013. Re-thinking sustainability indicators: local perspectives of urban sus-
integration in operations strategies. Int. J. Operat. Prod. Manage. 35, 216–245. tainability. J. Environ. Plann. Manage. 56, 695–719.
Luan, W., Lu, L., Li, X., Ma, C., 2017. Weight determination of sustainable development United Nations, 2015. Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable
indicators using a global sensitivity analysis method. Sustainability 9 (2), 303. http:// Development. New York, NY. Available from: https://www.un.org/pga/wp-content/
dx.doi.org/10.3390/su9020303. uploads/sites/3/2015/08/120815_outcome-document-of-Summit-for-adoption-of-
Marletto, G., Mameli, F., 2012. A participative procedure to select indicators of policies the-post-2015-development-agenda.pdf.
for sustainable urban mobility. Outcomes of a national test. Eur. Transp. Res. Rev. 4, United Nations – Sustainable Development, accessed on 4th February, 2018. Available
79–89. from: http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/cities/.
Mascarenhas, A., Nunes, L.M., Ramos, T.B., 2015. Selection of sustainability indicators for U.N. Department of Economics, 2007. Indicators of Sustainable Development: Guidelines
planning: combining stakeholders’ participation and data reduction techniques. J. and Methodologies. United Nations Publications.
Cleaner Prod. 92, 295–307. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.01.005. Wang, Y., Chen, P.-C., Ma, H.-W., Cheng, K.-L., Chang, C.-Y., 2016. Socio-economic
Mehta, S., Yadav, K. K., Chief, R., & Planner, T., 2016. Planning for a Smart City with a metabolism of urban construction materials: a case study of the Taipei metropolitan
Human Face in. area. Resour. Conserv. Recycl.
Moldan, B., Janoušková, S., Hák, T., 2012. How to understand and measure environ- WCED, 1987. Our Common Future. World Commission on Environment and
mental sustainability: indicators and targets. Ecol. Ind. 17, 4–13. Development. Oxford University Press.
Mori, K., Christodoulou, A., 2012. Review of sustainability indices and indicators: to- Wolch, J.R., Byrne, J., Newell, J.P., 2014. Urban green space, public health, and en-
wards a new City Sustainability Index (CSI). Environ. Impact Assess. Rev. 32, 94–106. vironmental justice: The challenge of making cities ‘just green enough’. Landsc.
Munda, G., 2006. Social multi-criteria evaluation for urban sustainability policies. Land Urban Plan. 125, 234–244.
Use Policy 23, 86–94. Xing, Y., Horner, R.M.W., El-Haram, M.A., Bebbington, J., 2009. A framework model for
Newman, P., Jennings, I., 2012. Cities as Sustainable Ecosystems: Principles and assessing sustainability impacts of urban development. Acc. Forum 33 (3), 209–224.
Practices. Island Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.accfor.2008.09.003.
Panda, S., Chakraborty, M., Misra, S., 2016. Assessment of social sustainable development Zhang, Y., Yang, Z., Fath, B.D., Li, S., 2010. Ecological network analysis of an urban
in urban India by a composite index. Int. J. Sustain. Built Environ. 5, 435–450. energy metabolic system: model development, and a case study of four Chinese cities.
Peter, N., Joe, F., Mike, B., Kuldeep, B., Steve, B., Andre, C., Jeanette, G., John, H., Tony, Ecol. Model. 221, 1865–1879.
R., Veronica, R., 1998. Environmental Indicators for National State of the Zhou, J., Shen, L., Song, X., Zhang, X., 2015. Selection and modeling sustainable urba-
Environment Reporting: Human Settlements. Environment Australia, Canberra, nization indicators: a responsibility-based method. Ecol. Ind. 56, 87–95.
Australia. Zoeteman, K., Mommaas, H., Dagevos, J., 2016. Are larger cities more sustainable?
Pissourios, I.A., 2013. An interdisciplinary study on indicators: a comparative review of Lessons from integrated sustainability monitoring in 403 Dutch municipalities.
quality-of-life, macroeconomic, environmental, welfare and sustainability indicators. Environ. Dev. 17, 57–72.
Ecol. Ind. 34, 420–427. Zygiaris, S., 2013. Smart city reference model: assisting planners to conceptualize the
Pupphachai, U., Zuidema, C., 2017. Sustainability indicators: a tool to generate learning building of smart city innovation ecosystems. J. Knowl. Econ. 4 (2), 217–231. http://
and adaptation in sustainable urban development. Ecol. Ind. 72, 784–793. dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13132-012-0089-4.

291