Integrated Model for Evaluating Infrastructure Sustainability in China. Min CHENG 1 Panpan LIU 1

Transcription

1 309 Integrated Model for Evaluating Infrastructure Sustainability in China Min CHENG Panpan LIU School of Management, Shanghai University, Shanghai, China 00444; ABSTRACT Being critical to modern economy and society, must be sustainable to maintain long-term use value and to satisfy the future need for urban development and economic growth. While existing knowledge and practice of evaluating sustainable is primarily focused on individual project or facility, research is needed to integrate sustainability into evaluation at the system level, e.g. a city or region. The system level of sustainability evaluation is especially important to support public policy decision making on investment. This paper presents an integrated framework of sustainability assessment for urban systems. The framework adopts a hierarchy structure of indicators to measure sustainable system. It also integrates factor analysis, TOPSIS model,entropy weight model and combined evaluation method into the analysis and decision-making process. A region of Yangtze River Delta(YRD) in China is discussed as a case study to demonstrate the merit of the integrated framework. The evaluation results indicate that the sustainability of system is different among the cities of YRD and is closely related to the economic development level and geographical position. Some cities like Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou with high economic development level have advanced system, while the sustainability in some cities away from regional economic center and lack of competitive industries are relatively low. This study provides an alternative methodology to assess the sustainability of urban system. KEY WORDS Infrastructure, Sustainability, Combined evaluation method,china INTRODUCTION Urban systems are the basic physical structures required for the society operation and economy growth. They generally refer to the set of interdependent structural elements that provide services essential to sustain and improve societal living conditions, such as roads, bridges, sewers, power generation facilities, streets and highways, telecommunication facilities(schübeler 996, Jeffrey 009). As the important support system of city development, should not

2 30 only be safe, effective, durable and satisfy the demand of basic functions, but also be sustainable, which means that the should maintain long-term use value and be in harmony with the continuation of economic and environmental sustainability (Boyle C,00). Sustainable development should be an important objective in planning and policy making. Since it is of vital importance for economic growth, system has been rapidly developed particularly in developing countries such as China in recent years. However, some of existing s are not sustainable. There is an urgent need to implement strategic changes in the provision of. A principal challenge for the managers is to develop practical method for measuring the current sustainability level of urban system. Research in the area of sustainable urban must tackle this challenge (Halla R. Sahely,005). Sustainability of has caused great concerns for many scholars. Several studies have analyzed project sustainability from different perspectives. For example, Rackwitz R. et al. (005) introduced a maintenance strategy for improving effectiveness based on cost-benefit analyses focusing on project performance during the operation stage. Ugwu, O. O. and Haupt, T. C. (007) identified key performance indicators for delivery and maps computational methods needed to achieve sustainability objectives in developing countries. Shen L. et al.(0) introduced key assessment indicators for assessing the sustainability performance of an project. Other studies contributed to the examination of sustainability for different types of, such as wastewater, transportation, and energy facilities (Murray A. et al.009, Halla R. Sahely et al.005; Brown, M. A. and Sovacool, B. K. 007; Klevas, V. et al. 009). Much of existing research on sustainable focuses primarily on single project or a certain kind of, less has been done on system. Different methods are also used to measure sustainability in the previous studies. Colorni, A. et al. (999) introduced a method to assess the environmental effect of transportation by using a decision support system. Yao H. et al.(0) introduced a simulation model and used system dynamics principle to evaluate the sustainability performance of highway projects during the construction and operation stage. Jones S.A., and Silva C. (009) proposed an outcome-based evaluation method which using Life-Cycle Analysis to examine three categories of sustainability metrics: technical, environmental, and economic. The applications of previous methods for assessing project sustainability or a certain kind of are limited for assessing system. Meanwhile, different evaluation methods may lead to different results, which could cause inconsistency. The main objective of this research is to develop a quantitative framework for evaluating the sustainability of urban system in China. The first step is

3 3 the development of a set of sustainability evaluation indicators. Then, an integrated model combines with a variety of methods which can eliminate the inconsistency of results obtained by different single evaluation methods is put forward. A region of Yangtze River Delta (YRD) in China is discussed as an illustrative example for proposed model to demonstrate the application of the integrated framework. INDICATORS FOR MEASURING THE SUSTAINABILITY OF URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE IN CHINA Identification of indicators is the basis step for the development of a sustainability evaluation system. Existing evaluation methods for investment focus mainly on economic benefits while neglecting the social and ecological effects (Shen L. et al.0). Since sustainable development is to achieve a balance between several objectives such as economic, social and environmental objective, it is necessary to evaluate the sustainability of from a comprehensive view. Urban system always refers to those system owned and operated by governments, generally including traffic system, energy system, water supply and drainage system, environmental facility system, postal and telecommunication system and public service facility system. Therefore, typical indicators are selected from these sub-systems to assess the sustainability of existing system. These indicators are identified by various existing studies including: Performance Indicators for Transport, by the World Bank(004); the Indicators for the Integration of Environmental Concerns into Transport Policies, by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD,999); Handbook on Infrastructure Statistics, by African Development Bank(0) ;research papers by Pan S. and Ma C.(007), Cai L. et al.(004), Huang J. et al.(0). The selected indicators and their definition or explanation are shown in table. Table. Assessment Indicators for Measuring the Sustainability of Infrastructure System Indicator Category Transport Water management Energy Communicati ons Code Indicators Indicators definition or explanation Per capita area of roads = Urban road area/ Number of urban residents Number of public buses per people =(Number of public buses/ Number of urban residents) Freight traffic volume 3 is calculated from the product of the cargo transported in metric tons 4 represents the capacity of transport indirectly and is 4 Passenger volume calculated from the number of passengers by railway, waterway, airway and road 5 Total volume of water Supply 5 represents the capacity and potential of water-supply 6 Per capita daily water consumption 6 =( Total water consumption / Number of urban residents)/365 Centralized wastewater treatment 7 =(Wastewater treated by urban wastewater treatment plant/ 7 rate wastewater discharge) 00% Daily per capita domestic 8 electrical consumption 8 =Domestic electrical consumption/ Number of urban residents 9 Popularization rate of gas Industrial electricity 0 consumption Fixed-line penetration rate 9 = (Number of urban residents with access to gas/ Number of urban residents) 00% 0 is to reflect the capacity of electric power facility is based on the total number of telephone lines in service at the end of the year per household

4 3 Environmental Public service Internet penetration rate is the number of internet users divided by the population and expressed in percentage 3 Year-end number of post office 3 represents the convenience of postal facilities Green coverage rate of built-up 4 =(Green coverage area in built-up urban areas/ built-up urban 4 urban areas area) 00% 5 Per capita public green space 5 indicates the average public green space per person Percentage of industrial waste water 6 up to the discharge standards 6 represents the ability of industrial wastewater treatment facilities Harmless disposal rate of 7 household garbage 7 represents the level of garbage harmless disposal facilities Number of hospitals and 8 and 9 represent the capacity of public health. 8 health-centers Hospital beds include inpatient beds available in public, private, 9 Hospital beds per people general, and specialized hospitals and rehabilitation centers 0 Number of theaters and music halls Number of books in public library 0 and represent the capacity of culture facilities per 00 people DATA SOURCES YRD, including Shanghai Municipality, Jiangsu Province and Zhejiang Province, plays an essential role in China s economic development and has become the largest economy center of China, accounting for nearly 0 percent of GDP and roughly half of all foreign direct investment. Infrastructure is substantial to this regional economy humming and has consistently been a focus for government in the economic development initiatives encapsulated in regular Five-Year Plans. According to the YRD Regional Planning approved by China's State Council in June 00, the YRD economic zone refers to 5 cities in Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang. The 5 cities are Nanjing, Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, Zhenjiang, Nantong, Yangzhou, Yancheng, Taizhou, Huaian, uzhou, Lianyungang, Suqian(above 3 in Jiangsu province ), Hangzhou, Ningbo, Jiaxing, Huzhou, Shaoxing, Jinhua, Quzhou, Zhoushan, Taizhou, Wenzhou,Lishui(above in Zhejiang province) and Shanghai. Research data in this paper is quoted from China statistical yearbook(0), Shanghai statistical yearbook(0), Jiangsu statistical yearbook(0), Zhejiang statistical yearbook (0) and the statistic yearbook of each city. METHODOLOGY An important aspect of evaluation framework is the requirement to adopt a systematic method to properly assess the sustainability. Although there are different approaches which can be used for sustainability assessment, different results may be obtained by these methods. In this paper, an integrated evaluation model is developed to eliminate the deviation of different single evaluation methods. The detailed steps are as follows(qiu H. et al. 03): Step. Several comprehensive evaluation methods including factor analysis method, entropy evaluation method and entropy TOPSIS method are used respectively to evaluate the sustainability of each city in YRD and different urban ranking can be obtained by these methods. Step. Kendall's coefficient is applied to verify the coherence of the rank obtained by different methods. If the assessment results are consistent by different methods, go to step 3. Otherwise, pair-wise consistency tests need to be taken to

5 33 select the methods which have consistency. Step 3. Several combined evaluation method including arithmetic average method, Borda method, Copeland s method and fuzzy Borda method are used to combine the evaluate results obtained in step. Step 4. Spearman Rank Correlation Test is used to test whether the combination evaluation results obtained in step 3 are closely related to basic evaluation results obtained in step. Step 5. The result obtained by the combined evaluation method which has the maximum value of Spearman rank correlation coefficient is taken as the final evaluation result. SUSTAINABILITY ASSESSMENT FOR URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE IN YRD Sustainability Assessment by Each Method In this paper, three widely used evaluation methods including factor analysis method, entropy method and entropy TOPSIS method are applied to evaluate the sustainability of urban respectively at first. The scores and ranking of 5 cities sustainability level in YRD obtained by the three evaluation methods are shown in Table. Table. Infrastructure Sustainability Score and Ranking Obtained by Different Method Method City Factor Analysis Method Score Rank Entropy Method Score Rank TOPSIS Method Score Rank Shanghai Nanjing Suzhou Wuxi Changzhou Zhenjiang Nantong Yangzhou Yancheng Huaian Taizhou uzhou Lianyungang Suqian Hangzhou Ningbo Jiaxing Huzhou Shaoxing Jinhua Quzhou Zhoushan Taizhou Wenzhou Lishui

6 34 Kendall Consistency Test for Evaluation Results Set up a null hypothesis H 0 (the results obtained by the three kinds of methods are not consistent) and an alternative hypothesis H (the result have consistency). Define the test statistic: k( n ) W () Kendall's coefficient of concordance is defined n as: ri i 3( n ) W () k 3 k ( n n) n where, r i y ij, n is sample number, k is evaluation method number, y ij is the j rank of object i obtained by evaluation method j. has the distribution with n- degrees of freedom. Critical value / n can be got from critical value table. If / n, the test rejects H 0 and accepts H, which means all kinds of evaluation methods are consistent at significance level. The sore of each method are substituted into () and we can get According to critical value table, a / ( 4). We would reject H 0 and that means the three evaluation methods are consistent at the level of significance 0.0. Combination Evaluation Several kinds of combination evaluation models including arithmetic average method, Borda method, Copeland s method and fuzzy Borda method are used to combine the evaluate results got by the above three single methods. The evaluation results are showed in Table 3. Table 3. Rank of 5 Cities Infrastructure Sustainability Obtained by Combination Evaluation Methods City Method Arithmetic average method Borda method Copeland s method Fuzzy Borda method Shanghai Nanjing Wuxi uzhou Changzhou Suzhou Nantong Lianyungang 4 5 Huaian Yancheng Yangzhou Zhenjiang Taizhou Suqian Hangzhou Ningbo Wenzhou 4 0 Jiaxing 9 0 Huzhou 6 6 3

7 35 Shaoxing Jinhua Quzhou Zhoushan Taizhou 6 8 Lishui 3 Consistency Test by Spearman's Rank Correlation Coefficient Consistency test by Spearman's rank correlation coefficient is to test the correlation between the results obtained by combined method and the results got by original single method. Suppose H 0 : m kinds of original single methods are not relative with combination method k ; H : m kinds of original method are relative with number k combination method. Define the test statistic: t k n k ( k,, p) (3) k m 6 ( xik xij ) i k jk Where, m, jk j n( n ) (j=,, m, k=,, p). t k has the t distribution with n- degrees of freedom. jk is Spearman's rank correlation coefficient which reflects the correlation between original method j and combination method k. The value of jk is higher, the correlation is closer. k is the average correlation between m kinds of original methods and combination method k. xij and x ik are the rank of object i obtained by original method j and combination method k. Where, n is the number of evaluation objects, m is the number of original single evaluation method and p is the number of combination method. It can be calculated that t = t = t3 = t4 = Given significance level 0. 0, the critical value t can be got from critical value table. Because t > t4 > t3 > t > t (3), the test rejects H 0. This means that the results obtained by four kinds of combination evaluation method and the results got by three single method are closely related at the level of significance 0.0. Since the t value of the arithmetic average method is the highest, the evaluation result of arithmetic average method is selected as the final result. DISCUSSIONS Systemic clustering method is used to cluster 5 cities in YRD based on the cities ranking of sustainability. These cities are divided into four categories by SPSS software. The first category includes Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Wuxi, Ningbo and Suzhou. The sustainability level of these cities is relatively high compared with other cities in YRD. In fact, the YRD Economic Zone is dominated by these cities. Shanghai is a municipality and the financial center of mainland China. n

8 36 The other cities are all the important economic hubs in the region. Nanjing is the capital of Jiangsu province and the hub for the automobile industry, electronics, energy, iron and steel industries. Hangzhou as the capital and largest city of Zhejiang province is an important manufacturing base and logistics center for coastal China. Ningbo is a growing economic port which provides import and export routes for neighbor provincial cities. Suzhou is a main manufacture base for foreign companies in China. To promote the coordinated development between the city facilities and economy, the local governments have made vast investment and impressive improvements to their systems. For these cities, regional linking development of will be the investment trend for the future. In fact, many high speed roads and trails which connect some cities have been established and been used. The second category includes Changzhou, Zhoushan, Zhenjiang, Nantong, Jiaxing and Huzhou, of which the sustainability is good. These cities have good development potentialities and the investment strength for system has been increased in recent years. Infrastructure could promote economic growth and, as a result, is the bedrock for better living conditions. Infrastructure also has important significance for urban development and achievement of sustainable development objectives, as services can encourage new investment, underpin many aspects of economic and social activity, facilitate the flow of ideas, goods and services, etc. The higher the sustainability of system is, the more the will contribute to the increasing of income, employment, productivity and consequently, the competitiveness of a city. Therefore, these cities should make further improvement on the sustainability of. The third category includes uzhou, Wenzhou, Shaoxing, Taizhou, Yangzhou, Jinhua, Huaian, Taizhou and Lishui. Their sustainability is at the medium level in those cities of YRD. Although some of the cities have high economic development level, their sustainability level still need to be further improved to create durable public assets and quality oriented services in cities. The fourth category includes Yancheng, Quzhou, Lianyungang and Suqian, which are far away from Shanghai, the center of YRD and their sustainability is relatively low. In fact, and urban development have a mutually in-exclusive relationship between one another. Urban development requires sustainable. Infrastructure bottlenecks may slow the socio-economic development and vice versa. Sustainable to urban development is just like a gear to a machine without which appropriate function is impossible. Since industry in south of Jiangsu and north of Zhejiang is concentrated and the development space become narrow in recent years, these cities should seize this opportunity to develop leading industry and improve existing system. CONCLUSIONS Infrastructure has a significant contribution to economic growth, social

9 37 development and environmental activities, especially in developing countries. In consideration of its great resource consumption and heavy investment, the sustainability of system should be properly evaluated before implementation. Hence, more research one valuation framework to support decision-making is needed. This paper, therefore, constructs a set of assessment indicators and puts forward an integrated evaluation model for measuring the sustainability of urban system in China. In this evaluation model, three single evaluation methods including factor analysis method, entropy method and entropy TOPSIS method are used respectively to evaluate the sustainability of urban and to get urban rank. Kendall's coefficient is applied to verify the coherence of the rank obtained by different methods. Several combined evaluation methods including arithmetic average method, Borda method, Copeland s method and fuzzy Borda method are used to combine the evaluate results of original evaluation methods. The coherence of the results obtained by combination evaluation methods and original single method is tested by Spearman Rank Correlation Coefficient. Finally, the final optimal evaluation result is achieved. In general, different results can be obtained by different evaluation method. Compared to single method, the integrate model put forward in this paper is more reliable to be the basis of investment decision-making, which could solve the inconsistency problems. This methodology provides a new research idea and method for sustainability evaluation. YRD, which has been a pioneer region in urbanization and a thriving sector of China, is selected as a study area. Infrastructure sustainability of 5 cities in YRD is assessed as a case study to demonstrate the application of the integrated framework. It shows that as for sustainability of there are obvious differences and disequilibrium among the mentioned 5 cities and the sustainability level is closely related to economic development level and geographical position. The results can help the local governments have an image of the present situation and make better decisions on investment. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The research reported in this paper is supported by the Natural Science Funds of China (Grant No. 7039) and the China Scholarship Council. REFERENCES African Development Bank(0). Handbook on Infrastructure Statistics, afdb. org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/documents/publications/afdb%0infrastructure_web.pdf Brown, M. A., and Sovacool, B. K. (007). Developing an energy sustainability index to evaluate energy policy. Interdiscipl. Sci. Rev., 3(4), Boyle C., Mudd G., Mihelcic JR. (00). Delivering sustainable that supports the urban built environment. Environ. Sci. Technol., 44(3):

10 38 Cai L., Zhang B, and Huang.(004). Comprehensive evaluation for the modernization level of urban in China. Urban Studies,(4):50-54(in Chinese) Colorni, A., Laniado, E., and Muratori, S. (999). Decision support systems for environmental impact assessment of transport s. Transport. Res. D-tr. E., 4(), -. Fulmer, Jeffrey (009). What in the world is?. PEI Infrastructure Investor (July/August): Halla R. Sahely, Christopher A. Kennedy and Barry J. Adams(005), Developing sustainability criteria for urban systems, Can. J. Civ.Eng.,3:7-85 Qiu H., Li.(03), A study of combined evaluation of suppliers based on correlation combined evaluation,j. Indust. Manage.,6():47-54 Huang J. Huang W. and Zhang Y.(0), Study on assessment of cities in China, Economic Geography,3():47-54(in Chinese) Jones S.A., and Silva C. (009). A practical method to evaluate the sustainability of rural water and sanitation systems in developing countries. Desalination., 48, Klevas, V., Streimikienea, D., and Kleviene, A. (009). Sustainability assessment of the energy projects implementation in regional scale. Renew. Sust. Energ. Rev., 3(), Murray A., Ray I., and Nelson K.L. (009). An innovative sustainability assessment for urban wastewater and its application in Chengdu, China, J. Environ. Manage., 90(): OECD (999). Indicators for the integration of environmental concerns into transport policies, Pan S.,Ma C.(007). Evaluation indicators system for the city infastructure development level, Systems Engineering,5(7):88-9(in Chinese) Rackwitz, R., Lentz, A., and Faber, M. (005). Socio-economically sustainable civil engineering s by optimization. Struct. Saf.,7(3), Schübeler, P. (996), Participation and partnership in urban management, The World Bank, Washington, DC. Shen L., Wu Y., and Zhang. (0). Key Assessment Indicators for the Sustainability of Infrastructure Projects. J. Construct. Eng. Manag., 37(6), Shen L., Lu W., Peng Y., and Jiang S.(0). Critical assessment indicators for measuring benefits of rural investment in China. J. Infrastruct. Syst., 7(4), Ugwu, O. O., and Haupt, T. C. (007). Key performance indicators and assessment methods for sustainability: A South African construction industry perspective. Build. Environ., 4(), World Bank (004). Performance and impact indicators for transport. Siteresources.worldbank.org/INTTRM/Resources/0407_redis-transport.pdf Yao H., Shen L., Tan Y., and Hao J.(0). Simulating the impacts of policy scenarios on the sustainability performance of projects. Autom. Constr. 0(8),