Evaluation and prediction of sustainability of urban areas: A case study for Kermanshah city, Iran

Sustainable development is a balance between economic growth, environmental issues and social conditions. In this respect, urban sustainable development is an important challenge, and a considerable part of sustainable development. Therefore, this study was carried out to assess and predict urban sustainability in different areas of Kermanshah city of Iran using an integrated approach, including the improved full permutation polygon synthetic indicator (IFPPSI) and Shannon's entropy methods. Kermanshah is the largest city located in the west of Iran with six main urban areas, which is facing many environmental, economic and social problems. The results showed that among the six urban areas, Areas 1, 3 and 4 have been shown to be at a moderate level, based on the synthetic indicator value (0.25-0.5). According to the synthetic indicator value (<0.25), the levels of the other areas (2, 5 and 6) are quite bad. The IFPPSI results were also compared with common multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) techniques, ELECTRE of the concordance subgroup, TOPSIS of the compromising subgroup and SAW of the scoring subgroup. The results of the Friedman test showed that there is no significant difference between the MCDM and IFPPSI methods; however, the IFPPSI method is preferred due to its remarkable advantages over the other methods. In a subsequent part, based on the data collected from three time periods, the years 1996, 2006 and 2016, the indicator anticipated for 2026 showing no improvement in the environmental, economic and social indexes compared with the current conditions. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.