Another strategy to assess sustainable development

The goal of sustainable development is to preserve sustainability and simultaneously prevent catastrophe in a man-land system. However, almost all the existing approaches to assessing sustainable development are to measure the sustainability, namely appraise from the obverse side of the sustainable development. So it seems necessary to attack the same task on the reverse, namely to measure the possibility of catastrophe. In this paper, with a case study of Tianjin, China, we employ catastrophe theory and models to integrate Tianjin’s sustainable development indicators, and then deduce the catastrophe risk index (CRI) to present the level of catastrophic possibility in the city. Applying catastrophe theory is a new strategy to assess sustainable development and shows great practical significance, especially for those developing regions or countries, who always give more priority to their economy and therefore have more obligation to make sure whether their social economic activities might bring forth any ecological environment catastrophe. Besides, being both qualitative and quantitative, the approach could be employed to explore not only static characteristics but also dynamic mechanism of man-land system. Although our work is only a maiden attempt and still calls for further effort to improve it, the case study of Tianjin in this paper would assure us the great promising future to apply catastrophe theory to sustainable development modeling.

The goal of sustainoble development is to preserve sustainabitity trod simultaneously prevent catastrophe in a man-land .system. However, almost all the existing approaches to assessing sustainable development are to measure the sustainability. namely appraise from the obverse side of the sustainable development. So it seems necessary to attack the same task on the reverse, namely to measure the passibility of eatostrophe. In this paper, with a case study of Tianjin, China. we employ catastrophe theory and models to integrate Tianjin＇s sustainable development indicators, and then deduce the catastrophe risk index （ CRI） to present the level of catastrophic possibility in the city. Applying catastrophe theory, is a new strategy to assess sustainable development and shows great practical significance, especially for those developing regions or countries, who always give more priority to their economy and therefore have more obligation to make sure whether their social economic activities might bring forth any ecological environment catastrophe. Besides, being both qualitative and quantitative, the approach could be employed to explore not only static characteristics bat also dynamic mechanism of man-land system. Although our work is only a maiden attempt and still calls for further effort to improve it, the case study of Tianjin in this paper would assure as the great promising future to apply, catastrophe theory to sustoinable devetopment modeling,