Alshuwaikhat Habib M, Adenle Yusuf A, Alotaishan Turki N
Department of Architecture and City Design, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
Interdisciplinary Research Center for Smart Mobility & Logistics, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
Heliyon. 2023 Jul 12;9(7):e18192. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e18192. eCollection 2023 Jul.
Climate change and environmental sustainability assessment are essential in city planning, design, and smart city advancement. Despite Saudi Arabia's high global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions ranking, a comprehensive review of extant studies revealed insufficient tools enhancing the policymaking and comprehension of climate change and environmental performance. This paper developed a hybrid green city index (GCI) and grey relational analysis (GRA) composite index for appraising national environmental sustainability via a robust, efficient, effective, and replicable grading process. The index is designed based on two primary considerations. The first is the selection of quality underlying indicators/categories, while the second is the adoption of GRA for conducting the normalization, weighting and aggregation process. These two considerations influenced the proposed composite index, which was later applied to Saudi Arabia as a study area. The results revealed that the environmental sustainability of Saudi Arabia is not significant, with the most outstanding of 0.3127 for 2010. At the category level, the favourable environmental sustainability ranking is between the 2010 and 2012 assessment period, with a gradual decline till 2018. This study's findings are unique as no studies within the context of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region have utilized this study's research approach. Although not all indicators of the proposed index were used in the study area, this study's methodology and outcomes have the beneficial impact of assisting Saudi Arabia's decision-makers across the cities in monitoring the status and progress of implementing its net zero carbon emissions by 2060.
气候变化和环境可持续性评估在城市规划、设计及智慧城市发展中至关重要。尽管沙特阿拉伯在全球温室气体（GHG）排放排名中位居高位，但对现有研究的全面审查显示，增强气候变化和环境绩效政策制定及理解的工具不足。本文通过一个稳健、高效、有效且可复制的分级过程，开发了一种混合绿色城市指数（GCI）和灰色关联分析（GRA）综合指数，用于评估国家环境可持续性。该指数基于两个主要考量因素设计。第一个是选择高质量的基础指标/类别，第二个是采用灰色关联分析进行归一化、加权和汇总过程。这两个考量因素影响了所提出的综合指数，该指数随后被应用于沙特阿拉伯作为研究区域。结果显示，沙特阿拉伯的环境可持续性并不显著，2010年最为突出，为0.3127。在类别层面，有利的环境可持续性排名在2010年至2012年评估期之间，到2018年逐渐下降。本研究的结果具有独特性，因为在沙特阿拉伯和海湾地区的背景下，没有研究采用本研究的研究方法。尽管所提出指数的并非所有指标都在研究区域中使用，但本研究的方法和结果有助于沙特阿拉伯各城市的决策者监测其到2060年实现净零碳排放的现状和进展。
