Assessing the sustainability of water companies: A synthetic indicator approach

Performance indicators (PIs) are essential in the benchmarking process used to rate and rank water companies. However, a set of individual PIs does not provide a holistic assessment of company performance from multiple perspectives. A multidimensional evaluation of the performance of water companies can be achieved by aggregating the PIs into a synthetic indicator. Although the concept of sustainability involves economic, environmental and social criteria, most of the previous studies have not considered these three dimensions simultaneously. This paper discusses a process of indicator aggregation using two approaches based on multi-criteria decision analysis to evaluate and compare the sustainability of water companies from a holistic perspective. A synthetic indicator embracing economic, environmental and social PIs was computed for a sample of 154 Portuguese water companies. Both methods yielded similar rankings of water company sustainability. The techniques and results presented in this paper may be utilized as a means of improving the benchmarking process in regulated water industries, as well as providing valuable contributions to decision-makers on the most efficient steps for improving the sustainability of urban water services.     

Comparison of Tools for Quantifying the Environmental Performance of an Urban Territory

To support effective urban policies aimed at decreasing the environmental impacts of cities, it is important to develop robust tools for accounting those impacts. Environmentally extended input‐output analysis (EEIOA) is among the most used tools for this purpose, allowing the quantification of both direct and indirect impacts. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is also a holistic and comprehensive tool that accounts for direct and indirect impacts—but its application to cities is still very recent. This study aims at applying EEIOA and LCA to the municipality of Aveiro (Portugal) in order to compare the outcomes of the two tools in terms of total impacts (climate change and fossil fuel depletion) and hotspots (sectors/products contributing most to the impacts), to identify limitations and advantages of the tools when applied to Aveiro, and to illustrate how LCA can be applied to cities. The total impacts estimated with LCA and EEIOA were similar and the hotspots were also the same: transports, food, construction, and electricity. However, the relative contribution of some sectors was very different in the two tools due to methodological differences mainly in system boundaries, type of activities or products considered in each sector, and geographical coverage of impact data. This study concludes that the analyzed tools can provide complementary results to support decision making concerning urban planning and management.     

Comparative analysis of passenger transport sustainability in European cities

Sustainable development in its three dimensions – economic, social and environmental – has become a major concern on an international scale. The problem is global, but must be solved locally. Most of the world’s population lives in cities that act as centres of economic growth and productivity, but which – if they develop in the wrong direction – can cause social inequalities, or irreversibly harm the environment. Urban transport causes a number of negative impacts that can affect sustainability targets. The objective of this study is to propose an analysis of sustainability of urban passenger transport systems based on available indicators in most cities. This will serve to benchmark the practices of different cities and manage their transport systems. This work involves the creation of composite indicators (CI) to measure the sustainability of urban passenger transport systems. The methodology is applied to 23 European cities. The indicators are based on a benchmarking approach, and the evaluation of each aspect in each case therefore depends on the performance of the whole sample. The CI enabled us to identify which characteristics have the greatest influence on the sustainability of a city’s transport system, and to establish transport policies that could potentially improve its shortcomings. Finally, the cities are clustered according to the values obtained from the CIs, and thus according to the weaknesses and strengths of their transport systems.     

Methodological proposal to assess the water footprint accounting of direct water use at an urban level: A case study of the Municipality of Vicenza

Climate change, world population growth and industrialization have placed considerable stress on the local availability of water resources. Considering that most of the world's population currently resides in cities, this issue has particular relevance in an urban environment. One of the methods that is recognized to support better water management is water footprint accounting. However, due to the requirement of large amounts of data and their limited availability, applications of this method at an urban scale use national or regional water use data. The goal of this study is to develop a methodological proposal to assess the water footprint accounting of direct water use at an urban level to support the local management of water resources by using local data, by adopting a bottom-up approach and by verifying its applicability in a real case study. The water footprint accounting approach was modified by adopting a modular approach in the definition of boundaries and by adapting the blue, green and gray water footprint accounting formulations. The proposed method was successfully tested in the municipality of Vicenza (north east Italy) and provided interesting responses in terms of water management. Herein, we also discuss the latest developments in impact assessments related to water based on a life cycle assessment, which should be used as a framework for the future development of the model that is presented.     

Addressing the Life Cycle of Sewers in Contrasting Cities through an Eco‐Efficiency Approach

Evaluating the sustainability of the urban water cycle is not straightforward, although a variety of methods have been proposed. Given the lack of integrated data about sewers, we applied the eco‐efficiency approach to two case studies located in Spain with contrasting climate, population, and urban and sewer configurations. Our goal was to determine critical variables and life cycle stages and provide results for decision making. We used life cycle assessment and life cycle costing to evaluate their environmental and economic impacts. Results showed that both cities have a similar profile, albeit their contrasting features, that is, operation and maintenance, was the main environmental issue (50% to 70% of the impacts) and pipe installation registered the greatest economic capital expenditure (70% to 75%) due to labor. The location of the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) is an essential factor in our analysis mainly due to the topography effects (e.g., the annual pump energy was 13 times greater in Calafell). Using the eco‐efficiency portfolio, we observed that sewers might be less eco‐efficient than WWTPs and that we need to envision their design in the context of an integrated WWTP‐sewer management to improve sewer performance. In terms of methodological approach, the bidimensional nature of eco‐efficiency enables the benchmarking of product systems and might be more easily interpreted by the general public. However, there are still some constraints that should be addressed to improve communication, such as the selection of indicators discussed in the article.     

The current and potential role of urban metabolism studies to analyze the role of food in urban sustainability

Food supply chains are essential for urban sustainability. To reflect on the state of knowledge on urban food flows in urban metabolism research, and the actual and potential role of urban metabolism studies to tackle food sustainability in cities, we systematically review scientific research on food from an urban metabolism perspective and apply statistical and thematic analyses. The analysis of 89 studies provides insights as to the relation between food supply and (environmental and social dimensions of) urban sustainability. First, food is an important contributor to urban environmental impacts, if a consumption-based approach is adopted. Secondly, the social impacts of urban food supply remain scarcely studied in urban metabolism research, but emerging results on public health, malnutrition, and food waste appear promising. In parallel, we find that the findings of the studies fail to engage with debates present in the broader literature, such as that of food justice. Our analysis shows that most studies focus on large cities in high-income, data-rich countries. This limits our understanding of global urban food supply. Existing studies use innovative mixed-methods to produce robust accounts of urban food flows in data-scarce contexts; expanding these accounts is necessary to get a better understanding of how urban food supply and its diverse impacts in terms of environmental and social sustainability may vary across cities, a necessary step for the urban metabolism literature to contribute to current debates around food sustainability and justice.     

Is urban green space per capita a valuable target to achieve cities’ sustainability goals? Romania as a case study

Urban green infrastructure is considered to be a key element in improving quality of life and creating an appropriate framework for sustainable cities. The most used quantitative indicator to assess urban green infrastructure is urban green space (UGS) per capita. This papeŕs aim is to analyze whether UGS is a valuable target to achieve cities’ sustainability goals. We used Romania as a case study, which should meet the target of 26 m² of UGS per inhabitants in all cities. Aerial images were used to extract the surface of the UGS categories for a sample of 38 cities in Romania. We compared our data with three other databases (National Institute of Statistics, Environmental Protection Agencies and Urban Atlas) to check for differences. To understand the contribution of geographic and socio-economic factors to the dynamic of the UGS per capita in Romania’s cities, we used a multiple linear regression. To identify differences between cities in terms of their proportions of UGS, multiple correspondence analysis was performed. We found significant differences between the surface of UGS reported by the administrative offices and that resulting from the spatial analysis. The process of reporting UGS data currently has methodological and perspective shortcomings. Moreover, the density of the built-up space, the proximity to major transport infrastructure, the cities’ founding period and the geomorphology criteria are important predictors for the UGS. The target of 26 m² of green area per inhabitant in all Romanian cities is not feasible and it should consider the cities’ characteristics, if you want to achieve sustainability goals. Urban green planning should focus more on the development of urban green infrastructure models that are adapted to each type of urban area.     

Interpreting life cycle assessment results for integrated sustainability decision support: can an ecological economic perspective help us to connect the dots?

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is often described as a sustainability decision support tool. In practice, however, the interpretation and application of most LCA studies are restricted to eco-efficiency considerations, which provide an important but incomplete basis for sustainability decision-making. Recent methodological advances in the field enable assessing LCA results against sustainability boundaries or thresholds at planetary or more finely resolved scales. Weighting, although controversial, facilitates consistent, stakeholder-appropriate decision-making that reflects prioritization among multiple and potentially competing sustainability outcomes. Here, we discuss how the three minimum necessary criteria for sustainability (i.e., sustainable scale relative to biocapacity, distributive justice, and efficient allocation), as proposed by ecological economist Herman Daly, may provide an internally consistent basis for integrating these methodological developments, and for subsequently better positioning LCA as a sustainability decision support framework.

     

Urban scaling and its deviations: revealing the structure of wealth, innovation and crime across cities

With urban population increasing dramatically worldwide, cities are playing an increasingly critical role in human societies and the sustainability of the planet. An obstacle to effective policy is the lack of meaningful urban metrics based on a quantitative understanding of cities. Typically, linear per capita indicators are used to characterize and rank cities. However, these implicitly ignore the fundamental role of nonlinear agglomeration integral to the life history of cities. As such, per capita indicators conflate general nonlinear effects, common to all cities, with local dynamics, specific to each city, failing to provide direct measures of the impact of local events and policy. Agglomeration nonlinearities are explicitly manifested by the superlinear power law scaling of most urban socioeconomic indicators with population size, all with similar exponents (1.15). As a result larger cities are disproportionally the centers of innovation, wealth and crime, all to approximately the same degree. We use these general urban laws to develop new urban metrics that disentangle dynamics at different scales and provide true measures of local urban performance. New rankings of cities and a novel and simpler perspective on urban systems emerge. We find that local urban dynamics display long-term memory, so cities under or outperforming their size expectation maintain such (dis)advantage for decades. Spatiotemporal correlation analyses reveal a novel functional taxonomy of U.S. metropolitan areas that is generally not organized geographically but based instead on common local economic models, innovation strategies and patterns of crime.     

Evaluating sustainability impacts of critical mineral extractions: Integration of life cycle sustainability assessment and SDGs frameworks

The extraction of critical minerals used in clean technologies has profound impacts on sustainable development goals (SDGs). Life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) is used to evaluate the sustainability impacts of products and services, but few frameworks exist to support SDGs assessment for the “green minerals” extraction. Here, we propose a mining-specific framework identifying linkages between LCSA and SDGs, along with a process to integrate methods and data. As a proof of concept, we assess the LCSA performance and local-community level SDG impacts of a nickel mining project in Indonesia. Integrating remote sensing, media sources, stakeholder's data, and expert opinion, we find that LCSA encompasses all 17 goals but only a subset of targets and indicators. The study highlights the need to incorporate indigenous people's perspectives in both LCSA and SDG assessments, and points to priority areas for improving life cycle sustainability and SDG outcomes: fighting corruption, protecting cultural heritage, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We suggest that this framework can inform corporate social responsibility activities, as well as consumer choices for low-carbon technologies.     

Developing an indicator system to foster sustainability in strategic planning in China: A case study of Pudong New Area,Shanghai

This paper reports how the use of a new integrated theoretical framework underlain by the concept of sustainability to establish an indicator system for strategic environmental assessment (SEA) can effectively address the quest for urban sustainability of Chinese cities. The usefulness of the new framework was justified by a trial implementation of the framework in an SEA of development in Pudong New Area, Shanghai, in which the indicator system was capable of providing both retrospective and prospective insights of the environmental challenges created by economic and social development in qualitative and highly legible terms. The study affirms the constructive role of SEA on National Economic and Social Development Planning in both the socio-economic and environmental sustainability and underlines the importance of carefully-crafted indicator systems to promote the SEA practices in China.     

Do green neighbourhood ratings cover sustainability?

Neighbourhoods are the building blocks of cities, which have their own architectural, cultural and economic systems. To improve neighbourhood sustainability, a consideration of their buildings, public spaces, infrastructure, and cooperation between their parts is necessary. Neighbourhoods are an integral part of urban planning activity, yet the development of neighbourhood assessment tools has just begun to spread.In the scope of this study, five assessment systems, CASBEE-UD, the 2009 and 2012 versions of the BREEAM Communities, LEED-ND, and DGNB-UD were compared. This paper presents the methodology and results of their comparative investigation. These systems categorise, measure, and rate their indexes and indicators differently, therefore it was necessary to integrate their processes to make them comparable. By means of a 3-level comparison and the indicator evaluation, the different neighbourhood sustainability assessment systems were compared in general as well as in detail.An evaluation based on the method provides information about the similarities, differences, and working methods of the systems, and this study can provide guidance in choosing a proper assessment system for a specific development, based on its detailedness, adaptability, and efficiency. It was also important to determine ways to improve the assessment systems.The study states that the DGNB neighbourhood sustainability system provided the best results in a comparison of their sustainability integration issues, the detailedness of their indicators, and their coverage of the pillars of sustainability. The newest systems synthesise the best qualities of each sustainability assessment tool. Meanwhile, the CASBEE tool differs from the others in the most aspects due to its different background. Finally, the LEED and BREEAM systems showed average results in main aspects.     

Life cycle assessment of granite application in sidewalks

Purpose

Sidewalks are important built areas for promoting environmental sustainability in cities since they support walking as a zero emission form of transportation contributing to protect the environment and the health of individuals. However, sidewalk management is typically focused on assessing their suitability for users without applying any environmental criteria on the infrastructure design. The paper aims to quantify the environmental impact that sidewalks can contribute to the urban space if no environmental criteria are applied in sidewalk design.

Methods

This study focuses on the environmental assessment of a very common sidewalk system found in cities to support pedestrian and light motorized traffic for over 45 years. The constructive solution consists of granite slabs (top layer) fixed on a mortar layer (3-cm thick) that is settled on a base of concrete (15-cm thick). The life cycle methodology was employed to conduct the environmental assessment of the system. The results are compared with the environmental outcomes of a sidewalk system that has the same function but is paved with concrete slabs to identify the environmentally optimal sidewalk design. The impact assessment method was CML Baseline 2001, and the inventory data were compiled from manufacturers associations, local authorities, and literature review.

Results and discussion

Construction materials have the highest environmental impact (48?C87%) in the sidewalk life cycle, where the granite top layer is the first contributor, although the amount of granite in the sidewalk system represents the 30% of the total weight of the construction materials used. A granite sidewalk has from 25% to 140% higher impact than a concrete one. The energy required to produce slabs is the key factor that characterizes the environmental impact of granite. Electricity and diesel consumption in stone cutting and moving represent over the 70% of the environmental burden of granite. The transportation of granite slabs is also relevant to the environmental impact. The use of imported granite could account for up to 76?C177% of the total environmental impact of the sidewalk life cycle.

Conclusions

Although granite is a natural material, using granite slabs as flooring material is not an environmentally suitable alternative over using concrete ones for paving sidewalks. The results have shown that if no environmental criteria are applied during sidewalk design and management, urban planners may be unconsciously contributing to an important environmental burden on the built environment. The ecodesign is a strategic opportunity to promote environmentally suitable urban infrastructures that contribute to promote urban sustainability in cities.

Recommendations

Energy efficiency techniques, water management, and well-considered transportation management should be developed and implemented in the granite industry to minimize the environmental impact of using it for paving. Additionally, further research is needed to quantify the environmental performance of other construction materials used in sidewalk construction in order to identify the best environmental alternatives and design improvements by optimizing the use of materials to the sidewalks functions.     

韧性城市研究综述——基于城市复杂系统视角

在全球气候变化与持续城市化的背景下,增强城市韧性是提升城市应急管理能力,实现城市系统可持续发展的重要途径。明确城市韧性的内涵、核心要素及相互作用机理,开展城市系统韧性测度与城市系统模拟,对提升变化环境下城市系统恢复力与韧性水平,缓解变化环境对城市系统运行稳定性冲击压力具有重要意义。基于文献与资料分析,全面解析韧性城市核心概念与各国韧性城市建设、管理与研究实践。此外,研究从城市复杂系统视角探究变化环境对城市系统影响机制、测度方法与系统模拟路径。研究为韧性城市理论、方法与实证研究提供了参考,并为我国韧性城市建设实践提供决策依据与政策建议。     

城市生态安全及其动态评价方法

城市生态安全是人类生存和发展的一个重大课题。当前,城市生态安全正严重威胁着城市的可持续发展。全面了解城市生态安全状况是维护城市持续发展的基础。而城市生态安全的研究仍处于起步阶段,在吸取现有的国内外相关研究成果的基础上,探讨了城市生态安全的内涵和动态特征,分析了城市生态安全问题。对城市生态安全的评价方法进行了研究,提出了城市生态安全状态评价的指标体系和评价模型,趋势分析模型,以及基于状态评价与趋势分析的城市生态安全动态评价方法。     

Mismatches between ecosystem services supply and demand in urban areas: A quantitative assessment in five European cities

Assessing mismatches between ecosystem service (ES) supply and demand can provide relevant insights for enhancing human well-being in urban areas. This paper provides a novel methodological approach to assess regulating ES mismatches on the basis of environmental quality standards and policy goals. Environmental quality standards (EQS) indicate the relationship between environmental quality and human well-being. Thus, they can be used as a common minimum threshold value to determine whether the difference between ES supply and demand is problematic for human well-being. The methodological approach includes three main steps: (1) selection of EQS, (2) definition and quantification of ES supply and demand indicators, and (3) identification and assessment of ES mismatches on the basis of EQS considering certain additional criteria. While ES supply indicators estimate the flow of an ES actually used or delivered, ES demand indicators express the amount of regulation needed in relation to the standard. The approach is applied to a case study consisting of five European cities: Barcelona, Berlin, Stockholm, Rotterdam and Salzburg, considering three regulating ES which are relevant in urban areas: air purification, global climate regulation and urban temperature regulation. The results show that levels of ES supply and demand are highly heterogeneous across the five studied cities and across the EQS considered. The assessment shows that ES supply contributes very moderately in relation to the compliance with the EQS in most part of the identified mismatches. Therefore, this research suggests that regulating ES supplied by urban green infrastructure are expected to play only a minor or complementary role to other urban policies intended to abate air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions at the city scale. The approach has revealed to be appropriate for the regulating ES air purification and global climate regulation, for which well-established standards or targets are available at the city level. Yet, its applicability to the ES urban temperature regulation has proved more problematic due to scale and user dependent constraints.     

Urbanization in Southeast Asia: Assessing Policy Process and Progress toward Sustainability

In investigating the relationship between urbanization and sustainability in cities of developing countries, many researchers have looked to rising incomes as a driver for environmental improvement. This article challenges the transition and evolutionary models of urban environmental development that suggest that as cities grow in per capita income, their local environmental problems will diminish. The transition model is outcomes-based, and a competing model based on greater attention to participation in setting sustainability goals and assessing the progress toward those goals is presented.
Consensus on appropriate sustainability indicators is a key element, albeit a challenging one, in the task of pursuing urban sustainability. This is due to the contested nature of the concept of sustainability and also the fact that much of the work done on sustainability has been conducted among countries or on a national scale. A brief review of health, urban transport, air quality, and sewerage indicators suggests that cities do not necessarily see more progress as the per capita income increases. Low-income cities in Southeast Asia that are performing well are likely to see a deterioration in standards with rapid economic and population growth.     

Towards life cycle sustainability assessment: drawing on the NEEDS project’s total cost and multi-criteria decision analysis ranking methods

Purpose

In the European Union project New Energy Externalities Development for Sustainability (NEEDS), power generation technologies were ranked by means of two sustainability assessment approaches. The total costs approach, adding private and external costs, and a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) were used, integrating social, economic and environmental criteria. Both approaches relied on environmental indicators based on life cycle assessment. This study aims to analyse the extent to which the development of life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) can draw on these ranking methods.

Methods

The approaches to rank technologies in the NEEDS project are reviewed in terms of similarities and differences in concept, quantification and scope. Identified issues are discussed and set into perspective for the development of a potential future LCSA framework.

Results and discussion

The NEEDS MCDA and total costs considerably overlap regarding issues covered, except for several social aspects. Beyond total costs being limited to private and external costs, most notable conceptual differences concern the coverage of pecuniary (i.e. price change-induced) external effects, and potential double-counting for instance of resource depletion or specific cost components. External costs take account of the specific utility changes of those affected, requiring a rather high level of spatial and temporal detail. This allows addressing intra- and inter-generational aspects. Differences between both ranking methods and current LCSA methods concern the way weighting is performed, the social aspects covered and the classification of indicators according to the three sustainability dimensions. The methods differ in the way waste, accidents or intended impacts are taken into account. An issue regarding the definition of truly comparable products has also been identified (e.g. power plants).

Conclusions

For the development of LCSA, the study suggests that taking a consequential approach allows assessing pecuniary effects and repercussions of adaptation measures, relevant for a sustainability context, and that developing a life cycle impact assessment for life cycle costing would provide valuable information. The study concludes with raising a few questions and providing some suggestions regarding the development of a consistent framework for LCSA: whether the analyses in LCSA shall be distinguished into the three dimensions of sustainable development at the inventory or the impact level also with the aim to avoid double-counting, whether or not LCSA will address exceptional events, whether or not benefits shall be accounted for and how to deal with methodological and value choices (e.g. through sensitivity analyses).     

The Impact of Sustainability Information on Consumer Decision Making

This article presents an empirical analysis of the impact of sustainability information on consumer purchase intentions and how this influence varies by issue (health, environment, and social responsibility), product category, type of consumer, and type of information. We assess over 40,000 online purchase interactions on the website GoodGuide.com and find a significant impact of certain types of sustainability information on purchase intentions, varying across different types of consumers, issues, and product categories. Health ratings in particular showed the strongest effects. Direct users—those who intentionally sought out sustainability information—were most strongly influenced by sustainability information, with an average purchase intention rate increase of 1.15 percentage points for each point increase in overall product score, reported on a zero to ten scale. However, sustainability information had, on average, no impact on nondirect users, demonstrating that simply providing more or better information on sustainability issues will likely have limited impact on changing mainstream consumer behavior unless it is designed to connect into existing decision‐making processes.