Sustainability indicator systems within urban governance: Usability analysis of sustainability indicator systems as boundary objects

While sustainability indicator systems (SIs) have proven to be valuable rational tools for improving the availability of information related to the relationship of cities and communities to natural limits, the indicators movement has achieved limited instrumental uptake in policy. This paper begins from a recognition that instrumental use of sustainability indicator systems is rare. Greater potential impact exists for SIs designed to be much more attentive to their conceptual and political values within their particular social and political context. In other words, greater attention to what has been called the governance of indicator systems, or the ways in which SIs fit as policy tools within a multilevel and multiactor governance context, is key to increasing their utility. This is particularly true given the need for decisive policy change, or even the introduction of a new development path, which is asserted within the sustainability agenda.Understanding the real and potential utility of indicator systems within multiactor governance processes, in which their roles are primarily rhetorical, conceptual and political, is facilitated by thinking about indicator systems as boundary objects, tools which open up dialogue, information sharing, learning and consensus-building across different policy boundaries: between experts and nonexperts, formal government and different nongovernment actors, higher-order governments and lower-order governments. This paper offers a comparative analysis of three sustainability indicator systems in the North American context – Vancouver's Vital Signs (Vancouver Foundation), Seattle's Happiness Initiative, and LEED-ND (US Green Building Council) – all of which have shown some success in operationalizing a new policy boundary as a means of making conceptual and political contributions to governance practices. The specific boundaries operationalized, the different approach taken by each project, and the usability demonstrated by each project at that boundary in terms of salience, legitimacy and credibility, are assessed comparatively. In general, the trajectory in design and use of ecological and sustainability indicators demonstrates an increase in appetite, aptitude and numbers of channels for use in processes of governance; however, these factors vary with the local social–political opportunity structure. This analysis presents the advances made as well as the tradeoffs evident in these cases across the gamut of different forms of usability of nongovernmental indicator systems designed for use as boundary objects, and suggests a path forward for indicator work which aims to change policy, from a governance perspective.     

A proposal to explore the role of sustainability indicators in local governance contexts: The case of Palmela,Portugal

The actual use of sustainability indicators and their steering potential is constrained by the particularities of governance contexts, by institutional patterns and changes, by the different interpretations of what sustainable development means and entails, and by the tensions around the main values nurturing the positions of the most relevant actors. This paper proposes a normative conceptual framework to further explore the role of sustainability indicators in local governance contexts, and applies it to the Portuguese municipality of Palmela. It aims to contribute to a better understanding of how, why and in what circumstances the processes of developing and using indicators can be important steering mechanisms for governance for sustainability, particularly at the local level. The methods used include primary literature review and official documents and data, interviews to local public officers and qualitative analysis. Palmela provides insights on concrete government achievements through the implementation of sustainability indicators, but clearly shows how they are insufficient to foster innovative governance arrangements for sustainability. The normative framework enables the identification of successes and failures of developing and using sustainability indicators in improving local governance and ultimately in helping to achieve sustainability goals.     

Meta-performance evaluation of sustainability indicators

There are many different kinds of frameworks for evaluating environmental and sustainability performance at the organizational level (profit or not-for-profit, private or public), sectoral level (e.g. industry, transport, agriculture and tourism), and local, regional or country levels. Despite the diversity of methods and tools to measure sustainable development, indicators are one of the approaches most used. However, these tools do not usually include evaluation of the performance measurement instrument itself. The main objective of this research is to develop a conceptual framework to design and assess the effectiveness of the sustainability indicators themselves. To put the proposed tool into practice, a set of key good-practice factors and meta-performance evaluation indicators is proposed for adoption in a national case study—the national sustainable development indicators system, SIDS Portugal, and the usefulness of this methodology is demonstrated. This approach aims to evaluate how appropriate a set of sustainability indicators is and allow an evaluation of overall performance-monitoring activities and results. Stakeholder involvement is an essential component of the proposed framework. The tool developed could support continuous improvement in the performance of ongoing sustainability indicator initiatives, allowing greater guidance, objectivity and transparency in sustainability assessment processes.     

人类福祉研究进展——基于可持续科学视角

人类福祉的研究兴起于20世纪50年代。在过去的十几年中,人类福祉与生态系统服务一并成为可持续科学的核心概念,发展迅速。不同学科背景的研究者逐渐认识到仅仅依靠经济指标无法恰当地评估人类福祉,经济发展只是实现可持续发展目标的手段,而提高人类福祉才是其核心所在。人类福祉研究为评估个人福祉和国家社会的群体福祉提供概念框架和测量方法,服务于政府决策。自2005年联合国组织的《千年生态系统评估》报告明确提出生态系统服务与人类福祉的关系以来,人类福祉的研究进入了快速发展的新阶段。近年来,国内外越来越多的学者从可持续科学的视角对人类福祉开展研究。与国际同行的工作相比,我国人类福祉研究集中于可持续科学视角下对福祉的定量化评估,而各学科之间,尤其是自然科学和人文与社会科学之间的交流合作相对较少。回顾了人类福祉研究的历史发展,及其在可持续科学视角下的新进展,具体包括:客观福祉,主观福祉,生态系统服务与人类福祉关系。最后,讨论了人类福祉研究的主要议题,以及我国人类福祉研究未来的发展方向。     

Sustainability indicator development—Science or political negotiation?

The efforts to develop sustainability indicators have strongly increased since the beginning of the 1990s, often led by intergovernmental processes. More recently, a number of sustainability indicator development processes have been initiated within large research projects that aim to design tools for sustainability assessments, funded by the European Union. The development of sustainability indicators provides a particular challenge to scientists, given the essentially normative dimension of the concept of “sustainability”. Thus, we argue, the development of sustainability indicators is a process of both scientific “knowledge production” and of political “norm creation”, and both components need to be properly acknowledged. Based on a respective theoretical framework and comparing five cases of sustainability indicator development processes (three science-led and two led by intergovernmental processes), we find that the political norm creation dimension is not fully and explicitly recognized in science-led processes. The paper concludes by discussing a number of implications for the design of sustainability indicator development processes, in particular with regard to participation and representation as well as adjustment of indicators over time.     

A methodology to identify sustainability indicators in construction project management—Application to infrastructure projects in Spain

Since the birth of the sustainable development concept and its application to urban planning and construction projects, countless sustainability indicator sets have appeared. This paper analyses the problems posed by these sets and the need to establish a method to identify and select an indicator set which includes every participant involved in the life cycle of a project, to find a proper balance between all actors. Sustainability is proposed as an opportunity for improvement throughout the project. Thus, we have developed a methodology to identify, classify and prioritise sustainability indicators based on risk management standards. The application of this method to infrastructure projects in Spain will reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the proposed method and is the first step to develop an indicator set for civil engineering projects.     

Sustainable Livelihoods and Ecosystem Health: Exploring Methodological Relations as a Source of Synergy

Using ecohealth as a transdisciplinary lens to explore the connections among overlapping domains of inquiry, this article examines methodological relations between Sustainable Livelihoods and Ecosystem Health, two approaches for improving rural health and well-being. The experience of working on a project tasked with developing an integrated, systems-based approach for understanding the nature of rural livelihoods and ecosystems provides the base for analysis. Several key insights are discussed: The overarching goals of health and sustainability facilitate collaboration among disciplines; differences arise from how each approach operationalizes systems as variables and indicators; the dependent variables for one approach can be used as the independent variables for the other. In summary, while broad concepts like health and sustainability help transcend differences across disciplines and scales of analysis, variables and indicators cannot, as they are bound to how an observed system is operationalized. An advantage of using an ecohealth lens is that it creates conceptual and analytical spaces in which differences can be reconciled and used as sources of synergy. A source of synergy revealed in this article is the interdependence of variables used by each approach.     

Eco-efficiency indicator framework implemented in the metallurgical industry: part 1—a comprehensive view and benchmark

Purpose

The purpose of this work was to develop an indicator framework for the environmental sustainability benchmarking of products produced by the metallurgical industry. Sustainability differentiation has become an important issue for companies throughout the value chain. Differentiation is sometimes not attainable, due to the use of average data, lack of comparative data, certain issues being overshadowed by others, and a very narrow palette of indicators dominating the current sustainability assessments. There is a need for detailed and credible analyses, which show the current status and point out where improvements can be made. The indicator framework is developed to give a comprehensive picture of eco-efficiency, to provide methods that enable relevant comparisons as well as the tools for communicating the results. In this way, the methodology presented in this study aims to make differentiation easier and thus aid companies in driving the development toward more sustainable solutions.

Methods

The framework is based on the existing indicator framework Gaia Biorefiner, which is primarily intended for bio-based products. In this work, the framework was further developed for application in the metallurgical industry. The indicator framework is built by first looking at the issues, which are critical to the environment and global challenges seen today and which the activities of the metallurgical industry may have an impact on. Based on these issues, suitable indicators are chosen if they exist and built if they do not. The idea is that all indicators in a group form a whole, showing areas of innovation while refraining from aggregating and weighting, which often compromise a comprehensive and objective view. Both qualitative and quantitative indicators are included. The indicators are constructed following the criteria set by the EU and OECD for building indicators. Each indicator further has a benchmark. The rules for building the benchmark are connected to the indicators. Suitable data sources and criteria for the benchmark and the indicators are gathered from literature, publicly available databases, and commercial LCA software. The use of simulation tools for attaining more reliable data is also studied.

Results and discussion

The result is a visual framework consisting of ten indicator groups with one to five indicators each, totaling up to 31 indicators. These are visualized in a sustainability indicator “flower.” The flower can be further opened up to study each indicator and the reasons behind the results. The sustainability benchmark follows a methodology that is based on utilization of baseline data and sustainability criteria or limits. A simulation approach was included in the methodology to address the problem with data scarcity and data reliability. The status of the environment, current production technologies, location-specific issues, and process-specific issues all affect the result, and the aim of finding relevant comparisons that will support sustainability differentiation is answered by a scalable scoping system.

Conclusions

A new framework and its concise visualization has been built for assessing the eco-efficiency of products from the metallurgical industry, in a way that aims to answer the needs of the industry. Since there is a baseline, against which each indicator can be benchmarked, a sustainability indicator “flower” can be derived, one of the key innovations of this methodology. This approach goes beyond the usual quantification, as it is also scalable and linked to technology and its fundamental parameters. In part 2, a case study “A case study from the copper industry” tests and illustrates the methodology.

     

The non-use and influence of UK Energy Sector Indicators

This paper presents the results from a case study on the role in policymaking of UK Energy Sector Indicators (ESIs), introduced by the government in 2003. The findings show that the ESIs constituted a very minor element within the broader evidence-base used by policymakers, and that this indicator set and its objectives were poorly known even to central players in the sector. The findings of this research provide further evidence for the observation that scientific knowledge (including evaluations, assessments and indicators) seldom play an instrumental role in policymaking, and are more likely to produce indirect, conceptual and political impacts. The analysis provides a number of tentative conclusions concerning such potential indirect impacts that accrue mainly through processes of dialogue and argumentation both during the preparation of the indicators and after their publication as part of the annual reporting by the UK energy department. The ESIs have played various conceptual and political roles, yet the concrete outcomes in terms of policy change remain to be explored. The conclusions highlight the limitations of rationalist notions of direct, instrumental use in the efforts to understand the role of indicators in policymaking. The paper concludes by three tentative propositions concerning the explanations to the absence of instrumental role of the ESIs, which could be usefully explored in future research: the characteristics of the energy sector; the characteristics of the UK policy culture; and the exceptionality of the ESIs in the general evidence-base of UK energy sector.     

Use and influence of composite indicators for sustainable development at the EU-level

Considering the on-going strive towards new, alternative indicators to measure our societal development pathways, and the fact that policy indicators remain largely enigmatic with regard to their patterns of embeddedness in institutional decision-making processes, it appears necessary to work towards reducing our lack of understanding of their interactions with policy-making. In the present paper, we focus on exploring the significance of composite indicators for policy making in the particular policy environment of the EU-institutions. Our research is underpinned by the conviction that such indicators are not systematically used directly, but have an indirect influence on policy making that needs to be better understood. Our analytical framework – in order to analyse the ways in which composite indicators enter policy processes – is characterised by the distinction between the ‘use’ and the ‘influence’ of indicators on the one hand, and on the other hand between 3 types of factors: indicator factors, policy factors and user factors. Our empirical results show that while most of the academic attention and political debate around indicators has tended to focus on ‘indicator factors’, such quality attributes actually mattered relatively little in our setting as determinants of indicator influence. This rejects the idea that the robustness of evidence would lie exclusively in its technical quality and in the independence of its producer, and instead calls attention to the processes of evidence-construction. Simultaneously, ‘user factors’ (beliefs and representations of policy actors) and ‘policy factors’ (institutional context) were crucial as explanatory factors of the policy mechanics we identified.     

Identification of Key Sustainability Performance Indicators and related assessment methods for the carbon fiber recycling sector

The need for the extensive use of sustainability assessment as a standalone tool to evaluate the environmental, economic and social aspects of an activity be it at project, product, company or region level has resulted in the development of various methods and standards. There are several indicator issues to address each aspect of sustainability and it is not easy for decision makers to understand the result due to the use of multiple indicators. In this regard, the paper aims at the identification and combination of indicators allowing to assess the sustainability which is applicable to a carbon fiber recycling sector. Indicators selection were carried out by performing an extensive literature review on existing publications dealing with the different pillars of sustainability and setting a number of selection criteria to prioritize indicators that are relevant to the sector. For the environmental aspect global warming, acidification and human toxicity seem to be the most relevant. The social-economic aspect can be addressed through considering the resource impact assessment by considering the supply risk due to the geological scarcity of a resource and the potential supply disruption due to geopolitical and other social factors. The finding shows that three indicators have been identified enabling the assessment of the environmental pillar. Then the necessity to use extra resources indicators was shown and justified by the need of providing a shorter timeframe perspective as well as to consider the amount of fiber to be recycled in the future and also to determine the potential benefit provided by the creation of this sector to the resource strategy point of view. This will be made possible by using such method as the criticality assessment that enable the consideration of geological and geopolitical supply risk as well as the characterization of the system dependence to a specific resource.Finally, these results lead to the expression of the need to the development of a novel indicator assessing the criticality of carbon fibers as well as the expression of the necessity for further research on the socio-economic perspectives.     

Development of composite sustainability performance index for steel industry

The steel companies are becoming increasingly aware about the sustainability challenges. In order to become a responsible corporate citizen, the industry has responded to these challenges through adoption of pillars of sustainability. The industry has made the beginning with identification of sustainability indicators. The indicators have been developed specifically for steel industry. Generally, it is quite difficult to evaluate the performance of company on the basis of large number of sustainability indicators. Integration of key sustainability indicators is quite essential for decision-making. Composite indicators are an innovative approach to evaluate sustainable performance. This paper presents a method for development of composite sustainability performance index (CSPI) that addresses the sustainable performance of steel industries along all the three pillars of sustainability—economic, environmental and societal. Organizational governance and technical aspects have also been considered fourth and fifth dimensions of sustainability.The objective of this paper is to introduce sustainability and to present a conceptual decision model, using analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to assist in evaluating the impact of an organization's sustainability performance. AHP has been used to determine the weights at various levels. Sub-indices have been evaluated and aggregated to form CSPI. The effectiveness of the proposed model is evaluated in a case study for a major steel company in India.     

Indicators for assessing socioeconomic sustainability of bioenergy systems: A short list of practical measures

Indicators are needed to assess both socioeconomic and environmental sustainability of bioenergy systems. Effective indicators can help to identify and quantify the sustainability attributes of bioenergy options. We identify 16 socioeconomic indicators that fall into the categories of social well-being, energy security, trade, profitability, resource conservation, and social acceptability. The suite of indicators is predicated on the existence of basic institutional frameworks to provide governance, legal, regulatory and enforcement services. Indicators were selected to be practical, sensitive to stresses, unambiguous, anticipatory, predictive, estimable with known variability, and sufficient when considered collectively. The utility of each indicator, methods for its measurement, and applications appropriate for the context of particular bioenergy systems are described along with future research needs. Together, this suite of indicators is hypothesized to reflect major socioeconomic effects of the full supply chain for bioenergy, including feedstock production and logistics, conversion to biofuels, biofuel logistics and biofuel end uses. Ten indicators are highlighted as a minimum set of practical measures of socioeconomic aspects of bioenergy sustainability. Coupled with locally prioritized environmental indicators, we propose that these socioeconomic indicators can provide a basis to quantify and evaluate sustainability of bioenergy systems across many regions in which they will be deployed.     

Development of agri-environmental indicators to assess dairy farm sustainability in Quebec,Eastern Canada

Agri-environmental indicators are commonly used to assess agricultural sustainability. In North America, few are designed to be easily used by dairy farmers. As farmers assume more responsibility for managing natural resources, they play an increasingly important role in assessing sustainable agriculture. This paper describes the development of an indicator-based self-assessment tool for use at the farm level to evaluate dairy farm sustainability from an environmental standpoint. The agri-environmental indicator set was selected by using two participatory processes: the Delphi method and a focus group. The framework for developing the assessment tool consisted of six steps: (1) Defining the concept of environmental sustainability at the farm level; (2) setting up goals and principles for the assessment; (3) identifying potential indicators and selecting candidate indicators; (4) defining reference values, aggregating indicators into components, and establishing relative weights for indicators; (5) testing the candidate indicators on dairy farms, and (6) selecting the final indicator set. Six criteria were used to evaluate either the practicality or usefulness of indicators. Thirteen indicators were chosen, one of which was divided into four sub-indicators. These indicators were aggregated into four components: soil quality, cropping practices, fertilization management, and farmland management. Expert participation was the first validation of the indicator set. A compromise between feasibility, practicality, and relevance of measurement was found among indicators. When applied to 40 farms over two contrasting regions, the indicator set identified scores that differed according to production context. The tool is user-friendly and well-adapted to dairy farming systems.     

A partitioning approach for regional sustainability based on economic development indicators and ecological values for China

With the acceleration of China's urbanization and economic development, the ecological conditions of some areas have deteriorated, which has seriously affected the balance of ecological sustainability and socio-economic development. Therefore, how to formulate scientific partitioning strategies for both regional socio-economic development and ecological protection has become a key issue. Aimed at maintaining and improving regional sustainability, we established a partitioning indicator system of China considering 19 value indicators. We constructed the separate sets of the ecological values and economic-development values layers. Based on these two categories, China is classified into four types of functional areas, which are defined as key protected area, development area, low-tension area and conflict area. Finally, the Zonation model was used to identify the important regions of ecological sublayers, then these regions were overlapped with the conflict area to identify the key regions in conflict status which need more attention for ecological sustainability. The main research results are as follows: The ecological situation is generally better in southern China, while the development degree is higher in eastern China. The partitioning map shows that key protected areas mainly distributed in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and parts of northeast China, and the existing nature reserves can protect most of the high-value regions of protected areas. In addition, most of the land in southeast China is identified as conflict areas. Though only 12% of high-quality habitats identified by Zonation are located in conflict areas, but nearly one-third of these habitats are in extreme-conflict status. The research results can provide a scientific basis for decision-making agencies to optimize regional ecological value and socio-economic benefits for regional sustainability.     

Mapping indicator models: From intuitive problem structuring to quantified decision-making in sustainable forest management

Most commonly, sustainability indicator sets presented as lists do not take into account interactions among indicators in a systematic manner. Vice versa, existing environmental indicator systems do not provide a formalized approach for problem structuring and quantitative decision support. In this paper, techniques for considering indicator relationships are highlighted and a coupled approach between a qualitative and a quantitative method is analysed. Cognitive mapping (CM) is used for structuring indicators and three different causal maps are derived based on established sustainability concepts: (a) criteria and indicators (C&I hierarchy), (b) indicator network, and (c) Driving Force-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) system. These maps are transferred to the Analytic Network Process (ANP) to allow their application in multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA).In an application example, Pan-European indicators for sustainable forest management (SFM) are utilized in an ANP-based assessment. The effects of the model structure on the overall evaluation result are demonstrated by means of three reporting periods on Austrian forestry.In a comparative analysis of CM and ANP it is tested whether their measures of indicator significance do correspond. Both centrality in CM and single limited priorities in ANP have been reported to identify key indicators that play an important role in networks. We found out that the correspondence between CM and ANP is the stronger the more rigidly cause-effect relationships are interpreted, which is the case for the DPSIR system of SFM indicators.It is demonstrated that using indicator sets without consideration of the indicator interactions will cause shortcomings for evaluation and assessment procedures in SFM. Given strict and consistent definition of causal indicator relationships, a coupled use of CM and ANP is recommendable for both enhancing the process of problem structuring as well as supporting preference-based evaluation of decision alternatives.     

国家公园旅游可持续性管理评估指标体系——以西藏色林错-普若岗日冰川国家公园潜在建设区为例

当前,国内外对于国家公园旅游可持续性的定义及其评估指标尚未形成共识,已有的部分指标存在可操作性较弱、管理成本较高等问题,无法直接应用于中国国家公园旅游可持续性的管理与评估。从三条路径构建国家公园旅游可持续性管理评估指标体系：以实际需求为导向,分析国家公园所在区域对旅游可持续性管理评估指标的需求;以国际共识为导向,检验《全球可持续旅游目的地标准》在国家公园的适用性;以实践为导向,梳理世界主要国家及地区国家公园旅游可持续性的管理重点。以色林错-普若岗日冰川国家公园（简称"色-普国家公园"）潜在建设区为例,建立国家公园旅游可持续性管理评估指标体系。从经济、社会、文化、生态环境等方面明确了色-普国家公园潜在建设区对管理评估指标体系的需求。经过适用性判定,识别在色-普国家公园潜在建设区具有较强适用性的可持续旅游目的地评估指标。通过频次统计,从经济、社会、文化、生态环境、制度建设等方面遴选世界主要国家及地区国家公园旅游可持续性的重点管理指标。所建立的色-普国家公园潜在建设区旅游可持续性管理评估指标体系包括5个一级指标,15个二级指标,36个三级指标。在此基础上,建议逐步建立健全监测与统计体系,为管理评估指标体系的应用提供支撑。     

The role of common local indicators in regional sustainability assessment

Sustainable development indicators (SDIs) are one of the most frequently used tools to assess sustainable development from an international to a local scale, supporting evaluation and reporting purposes. Indicators can also be particularly useful in addressing the growing need for interaction at regional and local scale in sustainability initiatives and assuring that regional assessments reflect community values, concerns and hopes. The main goal of this research is to develop a conceptual framework for common local sustainability indicators within a regional context, one that is supported by a participative approach and allows interaction between local and regional scales. Other major goals were to design the regional profile on local SDI initiatives and develop a set of common local indicators for the Algarve region – the most southerly region of Portugal. The framework is mainly supported on common strategic goals, objectives, targets, features and resources and on the existing regional and local SDI sets. A regional survey involving all municipalities was conducted to obtain data on local SDI initiatives and the regional profile was defined. By testing the framework in the Algarve, a proposed set of common local indicators was developed and presented in the survey for local authority evaluation. The main findings reveal that, despite the fact that there are still few local SDI initiatives in the Algarve region, the majority of municipalities surveyed fully agree on the importance of developing a minimum common local indicator set for the region. The role and usefulness of the proposed framework were demonstrated in the selection of 20 common local indicators for local–regional scale interaction in the Algarve. Establishing a set of common indicators on a local spatial scale can contribute to providing a coherent assessment framework, by preventing the duplication of effort, allowing local sustainability benchmarking and enhancing the analyses of asymmetries within a region.     

Developing an indicator system for local governments to evaluate transport sustainability strategies

This study proposed an indicator system for measuring and monitoring transport sustainability at the county (or city) level. Twenty-one indicators were grouped into economy, environment, society, and energy aspects. A committee comprised of government officials from Taipei City and New Taipei City proposed transport solutions to improve the transport sustainability of the Taipei metropolitan area. Ten key indicators were selected to measure the sustainable transport strategies. This study applied Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs) and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to construct the cause–effect relationships between these key indicators and to evaluate sustainable transport strategies. The evaluation results showed that the strategy of expanding mass rapid transit (MRT) lines was predicted to produce the most significant improvements; the strategy of integrating bus exclusive lanes would provide the least improvement; and the strategies of promoting cleaner vehicles and integrating Fu-Kang bus resources would perform similarly to each other in improving transport sustainability.     

Sustainability indicators for municipalities of megacities: Integrating health,safety and environmental performance

The sustainability assessment of public sector organizations including municipalities, with a focus on the integration of health, safety, and environmental (HSE) issues in the context of sustainability performance indicators, has almost remained underexplored. Moreover, since a large number of the activities of megacities’ municipalities have directly to do with HSE issues, there seems to be a substantial gap in the study of megacities and corresponding local public administrations. The present study is aimed at developing a performance evaluation tool, supported by indicators, to monitor the HSE aspects of sustainable development in the municipalities of megacities. To put the proposed tool into practice, a set of performance evaluation indicators is proposed to be adopted in Iranian municipalities, integrated in the megacity of Tehran. The selection process was conducted by employing Delphi technique. In doing so, a 2-round questionnaire was responded by qualified experts to select the most robust indicators of HSE performance and evaluate the priority of each indicator. A total of 80 indicators were generated and grouped into 13 categories, 29 sub-categories, and 7 themes- (Health (H), Safety (S), Environment (E), Health-Safety (HS), Health-Environment (HE), Safety-Environment (SE), and Health, Safety and Environment (HSE)). Findings indicate that amongst the overall average score of the 13 categories, “Fire and emergency response” is the most important category, closely followed by “Waste”, “Transportation”, and “Natural systems” categories. Moreover, among the 7 proposed themes, the integrated “HSE theme”, nearly followed by “safety theme”, plays the most significant role in enhancing the HSE performance of sustainability in Tehran municipalities. It is concluded that in the HSE context of the megacities municipalities under scrutiny, social aspects of sustainability gain more attention in comparison with the environmental ones. Furthermore, in municipalities of megacities, the indicators related to health and safety could be considered as ‘key indicators’ and should be thus classified into independent categories so that their roles can be highlighted in the management and assessment of municipal sustainable development.