SCT METRICS
The overall project aims to provide ‘sustainability assessments’ for the mega city, starting as those urban regions with more than 5 million residents, starting here in Toronto. Consistent with the World Urbanization Prospects, United Nations, the overall urban system (city region) is assessed. Sustainability is measured under two broad areas; bio-physical and socio-economic. The goal is to develop a efficient model for the on going collection of these data, thus monitoring of the sustainable indicators and provide an open source platform for citizens to understanding and potentially engaging people for changes.
The metrics standard used to evaluate sustainabilities are researched and referenced from Daniel Hoornweg's thesis paper.
BIOPHYSICAL METRICS
The following are the biophysical metrics that SCT follows.
Climate change – GHG emissions
⚫ Biodiversity loss – ecological footprint, index of biodiversity impact
⚫ Fresh water use – per capita water consumption, potable water supply, index of embodied water
consumption
⚫ Change in land use – local land use change, population density, Index of global land use
⚫ Nitrogen cycle – estimated per capita consumption patterns
⚫ Chemical pollution – solid waste collection, wastewater collection, PM 10, PM 2.5, Index of solid
waste (under development)
⚫ Urban resilience – number of natural disaster related deaths, annual GDP, threated GDP, GDP loss
due to natural disasters, Index of resilience
SOCIAL ECONOMICAL METRICS
The following are the social economical metrics SCT follows.
⚫Youth opportunity – under 5 mortality, gender equity, females in schools, youth unemployment,
life expectancy
⚫ Economy – unemployment rate, Gini coefficient, population living in slums/homeless, GDP
⚫ Energy access/intensity – authorized electrical service, clean energy for cooking, energy intensity
⚫ Mobility and Connectivity – number of automobiles, daily public transport trips, internet
connections, mode of travel, transportation fatalities, commercial air connectivity
⚫ Institutions – ease of doing business, corruption of city officials, ratio of tax collected, debt service
ratio
⚫ Basic services – solid waste collection, wastewater collection, potable water supply
⚫ Security and public safety – fire related deaths, homicides, violent crime rate, Index of health care.
GOOGLE DOCUMENTATION
Most of our preliminary researches are summarized in the report that can be found in the google documentation.
We are looking to expand the effectiveness sharing this data using visualization tools in the near future.