Constructing a standard system of city sustainable development assessment technology based on the SDGs

Given the rapid development of China’s new urbanization,cities with different locations and varying functional positioning,resource endowments,and development stages have insufficient scientific and applicable technical tools for implementing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs).City managers and policymakers must urgently establish SDG benchmarks to diagnose city development.Moreover,successful experiences from similar cities regarding sustainable development and self-improvement must be learned from to promote diversified,sustainable development across the country.Furthermore,emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence,the Internet of Things,big data and 5G are widely used in smart cities.Therefore,there is a growing need for“knowledge-based,personalized and intelligent”technologies to support monitoring,evaluation,and decision-making processes facilitating sustainable development in cities.This paper uses standardization as the theoretical support and technical basis.This approach can help clarify the sustainable development processes in China and clarify the evaluation results of and provide data on horizontal city comparisons,which can be used to develop evaluation technology for sustainable development in cities and construct a standardized system.The results provide a standard framework for intelligent assessment and decision-making regarding cities’sustainable development capabilities in China.Evaluating major international standardization institutions reveals that the practices of Chinese national standards should be fully absorbed and integrated to guide the evaluation of smart,resilient,and low-carbon cities.To this end,an indicator library of city sustainable development is proposed to provide standard evaluation technology methods.Finally,analyzing the response relationship of the indicator library to SDGs reveals the need for a standardized knowledge map of sustainable development assessment techniques and methods from the perspective of integrated management for sustainable development in cities.

An ecological value evaluation method based on ecological restoration:A case study of the Saihanba Mechanized Forest Farm in Chengde City

As China continues to develop its ecological civilization,it is crucial to quantitatively assess the ecological value to understand its potential impact on regional sustainable development.While previous studies have highlighted the importance of ecological value,they have not fully reflected the value of ecological restoration work or considered social costs and benefits,lacking a people-centered approach.Hence,this study analyzes the essence of ecological value from the perspective of sustainable development.By studying emblematic ecological restoration areas such as the Saihanba Mechanized Forest Farm in Chengde City,it aims to identify the significance of ecological restoration efforts in enhancing regional sustainable development capacity.The results underscore the necessity of comprehensively considering the value chain from ecological construction to ecological output,highlighting the value of ecological restoration in the ecological construction process as well as the well-being of people in the ecological output process.This approach assigns more economic and humanistic attributes to ecological value,thereby better serving the development of ecological restoration areas.

Construction of an indicator library for cities’sustainable development

Cities are key to countries’strategies for achieving the UN’s sustainable development goals(SDGs).In China,evaluating cities’sustainable development(CSD)processes and abilities requires establishing an indicator library for cities’sustainable development(ILCSD).Based on the SDG framework,and referring to typical evaluation systems and international standards,this study proposes an ILCSD,aiming to promote new urbanization and high-quality development in China.Using a step-by-step“eliminate-replace-augment”indicator selection method that takes mature indicators from existing standards for city evaluation,we form an ILCSD that responds to the SDGs while meeting China’s specific needs.Using the ILCSD,cities can select a set of indicators to assess and monitor their strengths and weaknesses.Through empirical analysis,we verify the feasibility of using ILCSD to construct a CSD evaluation system for Beijing,China.For the first time,ILCSD has established a mapping relationship between the core indicators from domestic and foreign standards of city development and the SDGs.It provides a tool for cities in different regions,at different stages of development and with different endowment types to select high-quality indicators according to local conditions,effectively solving the“last mile”problem of SDGs implementation at the city level.In the process of implementing indicators,we further suggest that important indicators with incomplete statistical data should nevertheless be included in the scope of cities’statistical monitoring.This study’s findings can facilitate China’s contribution to global sustainable development indicators and to future revisions of international standards.