Fuzzy evaluation of heterogeneous quantities: Measuring urban ecological efficiency

Evaluation of Regional Ecological Efficiency and Intelligent Decision Support for Sustainable Development Based on Environmental Big Data

To promote urbanization in the next stage, it is of great significance to explore the ecological efficiency of green ecological regions and advance the sustainable development of a social economic system. However, spatial heterogeneity has not been fully considered in the existing evaluation models or methods for regional ecological efficiency (REE), and the corresponding decisions on sustainable development are not the optimal solutions. To solve the problems, this paper explores the evaluation of REE and intelligent decision support for sustainable development by analyzing environmental big data. Firstly, the spatiotemporal evolution of REE was examined based on environmental big data to clarify the spatial layout of REE and the sources of the spatial differences. Next, a multiobjective optimal decision-making model was established for the sustainable development of a regional ecosystem, and the solving method was presented for the model. The proposed model was proved valid through experiments.

Urban Ecological Efficiency and Its Influencing Factors—A Case Study in Henan Province, China

The urban ecological civilization construction relates to welfare of the people and the national future. It is an important field of the high-quality economic development to improve the urban ecological efficiency level. The purpose of this research is to provide a new perspective and method for the quantitative study of the urban sustainable development, and also to provide some decision-making references for the improvement of the urban ecological efficiency in Henan province. This paper uses the slacks-based measure-data envelopment analysis (SBM-DEA) model containing the undesirable output and the Malmquist index model to fully evaluate the urban ecological efficiency level in Henan province during the period of 2005–2016, via both the static and dynamic analysis. Based on this, the bootstrap regression model is applied in analyzing the influencing factors of the urban ecological efficiency. The research shows three findings. First, according to the static efficiency analysis, the urban ecological efficiency in Henan province is low as a whole and has a big promotion space. Moreover, there is a significant difference in the urban ecological efficiency level among the five regions because of the different geographical locations and social and economic development situations of the cities. Second, according to the dynamic efficiency analysis, in the last 12 years, the urban ecological efficiency in Henan province has shown an overall growth trend, and the technological progress has played a major role in promoting the urban ecological efficiency in Henan province. Third, according to the influencing factor analysis, the governmental financial support hinders the improvement of the urban ecological efficiency in Henan province, while the level of opening to the outside world, the urban population density, and the urban greening level promote it.

Sustainability Governance in China: An Analysis of Regional Ecological Efficiency

The Chinese government is committed to sustainability governance to alleviate the shortage of energy and the imbalance between ecological environment and economic development. This paper evaluates and analyzes the sustainability governance performance of China. A bootstrap data envelopment analysis (DEA) is proposed to evaluate sustainability governance performance of 30 provinces based on ecological efficiency in China from 1998 to 2015. The results indicate that the ecological efficiency of China significantly improved as a whole, which is related to the decline in sulfur dioxide emissions. Among these provinces, Jiangsu, Liaoning, and Inner Mongolia exhibited the highest values, while Gansu, Chongqing, and Sichuan had the lowest values. The 30 provinces were divided into four sub-areas. The average ecological efficiency of the eastern area was the highest, followed by the northeast area. Compared to the east area, northeast area, and central area, we find that west area obviously falls behind. As such, the results provide helpful guidance to improve ecological governance performance.

Energy and environmental life cycle assessment of an institutional catering service: An Italian case study

Food production is recognised as one of the major drivers for global environmental pressure. In the last years, changes in consumption models result in an increasing population consuming food out of home that pose the catering service sector at the centre of the European Union policies aimed at improving the environmental sustainability of the food sector. In this framework, better technical knowledge on the environmental impacts of catering service is essential in order to identify potential actions towards a more sustainable food sector. This article presents an environmental assessment of a school catering service operating in Italy and delivering approximately 2,518,128 meals per year. Starting from primary data on the amount of each food consumed in the catering service examined, we perform an environmental analysis of an equivalent meal ready to be consumed in the schools canteens by using the Life Cycle Assessment methodology consistent with ISO 14040 standard. The system boundaries include food and tableware production, food transport, food storage and cooking and waste treatment. Due to a lack of primary data tableware production, food storage, cooking and waste treatment are modelled using literature data or models. The results of the analysis show that the food production phase is relevant to almost all assessed impact categories (contribution higher than 65%). The exception is represented by photochemical oxidation impact categories in which the larger impact is linked to the transportation phase. The environmental impacts associated to the tableware production, food storage and cooking are relevant to global warming and global energy requirement (contributions higher than 7%). The scenario analysis of potential actions aimed at reducing the environmental impacts of the catering service shows that, to obtain a more sustainable food sector, strategies must be implemented along the entire food supply chain and considering a wide range of environmental impact categories.