Study On Regional Sustainable Development Evaluation

Sustainable development, as a result of human being's profundity introspection and knowledge in the long-term practice, is one of the global focal issues in the 21st century. It has been accepted by the international society and many national governments. At present, the research on sustainable development evaluation is still in groping stage both at home and abroad. Given the fact that an acknowledged index system along with an evaluation method has not been established which affects the implement of sustainable development stratagem, this paper was composed of the below sections:Firstly, the characteristics and subsystem composing of regional sustainable development system were discussed, and based on extensive research documents a three-dimensional framework of indicator system for regional sustainable development was established. In the meantime, combining with the actuality of Dalian and data availability, an indicator system for evaluating regional sustainable development in Dalian was developed, which involved four layers and five subsystems containing population, economy, society, resource and environment amounted to 71 indicators.Secondly, considering both the coordination of the five subsystems and the temporal dynamic property of sustainable development, a comprehensive evaluation model for regional sustainable development status was put forward, which integrated with mathematical methods including improved principal component analysis (PCA), regression analysis, relative hamming distance formula and positive-negative weighted hamming distance formula.Finally, a case study of regional sustainable development evaluation on Dalian from 1995 to 2004 was carried out by the application of the index system and the quantitative model above, and the results showed that Dalian had not achieved the basic requirement of sustainable development, and its sustainable development system belonged to non-coordination state basically. Subsequently, it was pointed out that the radical approach of achieving sustainable development stratagem for Dalian were promoting human resource quality, developing circular economy, establishing resource-saving and environment-friendly society, and a series of helpful suggestions to decisionmakers were proposed.The framework established was practical and universal, and could provide a base for specific area to select its assessment indicators. The operable indicator system developed which synthetically reflected the sustainable development status of Dalian could fill up theblank of regional sustainable development evaluation in Dalian, and this work was of practical and strategic significance to a certain extent. In allusion to the flaw existed in dimensionlessness of original data in PCA, mean value method was adopted instead of traditional standardized method, and the guidance for confirming the direction of eigenvector was first brought to PCA in the application of sustainable development evaluation aimed to increase the objectivity and accuracy of evaluation. The evaluation results on Dalian could supply beneficial references for decisionmakers to make and adjust sustainable development strategic goal and countermeasures.