TY - JOUR
T1 - A quantitative method for the evaluation of policies to enhance urban sustainability
AU - Fitzgerald, Brian G.
AU - O'Doherty, Travis
AU - Moles, Richard
AU - O'Regan, Bernadette
PY - 2012/7
Y1 - 2012/7
N2 - There is a need to define sustainable development in terms which are more clearly policy-relevant, so as to facilitate the quantitative evaluation of sustainability policies. This paper presents a novel quantitative method to evaluate urban sustainability enhancing policies to further enable evidence based policy making. Quantitative data on more than 300 economic, social and environmental attributes of 79 small to medium sized urban Irish settlements were assembled into a database. This provided a baseline against which projected impacts of fresh policy implementation may be evaluated. Literature searches for assessments of the impacts of policy implementation provided quantitative data on the likely impacts of policies in transport, environment, socio-economics and quality of life. The method has been named Sustainability Evaluation Metric for Policy Recommendation (SEMPRe), and is designed to be user-friendly for decision makers. SEMPRe assigns each candidate policy a numeric value indicating its projected effectiveness in enhancing settlement sustainability as an aid to evidence based decision making. As further quantitative assessment of impacts of additional policies are published in future, the range of policies testable using SEMPRe will increase.
AB - There is a need to define sustainable development in terms which are more clearly policy-relevant, so as to facilitate the quantitative evaluation of sustainability policies. This paper presents a novel quantitative method to evaluate urban sustainability enhancing policies to further enable evidence based policy making. Quantitative data on more than 300 economic, social and environmental attributes of 79 small to medium sized urban Irish settlements were assembled into a database. This provided a baseline against which projected impacts of fresh policy implementation may be evaluated. Literature searches for assessments of the impacts of policy implementation provided quantitative data on the likely impacts of policies in transport, environment, socio-economics and quality of life. The method has been named Sustainability Evaluation Metric for Policy Recommendation (SEMPRe), and is designed to be user-friendly for decision makers. SEMPRe assigns each candidate policy a numeric value indicating its projected effectiveness in enhancing settlement sustainability as an aid to evidence based decision making. As further quantitative assessment of impacts of additional policies are published in future, the range of policies testable using SEMPRe will increase.
KW - Indicators
KW - Policy evaluation
KW - Sustainability measurement
KW - Urban planning
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84855266314&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.ecolind.2011.12.002
DO - 10.1016/j.ecolind.2011.12.002
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84855266314
SN - 1470-160X
VL - 18
SP - 371
EP - 378
JO - Ecological Indicators
JF - Ecological Indicators
ER -