基于NLPCA-GSO可持续发展评价——以环渤海区域为例

区域可持续发展水平、发展的持续性和系统的协调性是区域可持续发展定量评价研究的三角构架,而在传统上基于各子系统主成分分析结果直接进行形色各异的加权计算对可持续发展评价而言是有待商榷的。提出了非线性主成分分析和施密特正交化(NLPCA-GSO)相耦合的方法评价区域的可持续发展水平来弥补传统方法的不足,并由此建立区域发展持续性模型和可持续发展系统协调度模型,再以环渤海区域为实证分析其2001—2010年的可持续发展状况。结果表明:基于NLPCA-GSO的可持续发展水平模型可以很好地弥补传统主成分分析及对各子系统结果的综合评价的不足;区域发展持续性模型、协调性模型和区域可持续系统变化的滤波分析形象地揭示区域可持续发展的实质和内涵;实证研究表明环渤海区域在研究时段内可持续发展水平有所上升,而环境子系统持续性的下降是引起区域发展持续性和系统协调度的变化的主要原因。研究结果可丰富区域可持续发展评价的方法学,也可为环渤海区域的可持续发展研究奠定基础。

Sustainable development assessment based on NLPCA-GSO: a case study of the Bohai Rim region

The regional sustainable development level, sustainability of regional development, and system coordination are the three components comprising regional sustainable development assessments. Traditional methods determining entire sustainable development system levels, including the sustainable development level of societies, economies, and environmental subsystems, using principal component analyses (PCA) are problematic. The sustainable development of the Bohai Rim region, including two municipalities and three provinces in China, is affected by extreme conflicts between socioeconomic development and environmental pollution. We proposed a model coupling nonlinear principal component analysis and Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization (NLPCA-GSO), and provided a holistic regional sustainable development assessment method, including the sustainable development level, sustainability of regional development, and system coordination, in a single society-economy-environment system, using the Bohai Rim region as a case study. The evaluation framework, including the NLPCA-GSO, sustainability of regional development (SRD), and sustainability coordination (SC) models, was initially constructed, and was composed of three modules as three steps in the specific analysis. In the first module, the three subsystems in the sustainable development level were emphasized by NLPCA when the variables were selected, and the comprehensive level of the entire sustainable development system was highlighted by GSO when the different base vectors were determined; in second module, we focused on the dynamic potential of regional development and showed sustainability through the acceleration of the entire sustainable development level between each sample compared to first sample; and in third module, the sustainability of all subsystems was compared and the system coordination changes were emphasized, with a filtering analysis of sustainable development system changes presented. The present study emphasized a novel approach to determine the sustainable development level of several subsystems and to overcome the incomparability of PCA results among subsystems. NLPCA was used to overcome traditional PCA deficiencies in complex and multidimensional sustainable-development systems, and the eigenvector direction was determined to avoid distorted results. The results showed that the NLPCA-GSO model evaluated all the subsystems comprehensively; and the SRD and SC models graphically demonstrated the essential and connotation of sustainable development; the empirical study indicates that the Bohai Rim region has experienced a distinct development period, and while sustainability remained low, the sustainable development level and sustainability coordination increased slightly during the study period, possibly caused by the decrease of the environmental subsystem sustainability. Obviously, resources, energy, and ecological environmental factors cannot be substituted by physical or human capital only as the essential inputs in economic production, consumption, or welfare. The present study enriches the sustainable development assessment theory and methodology, and lays the foundation for further sustainable development research in the Bohai Rim region.