Comprehensive evaluation method of urban remnant natural area: a case study of Shanghai, China

Urban remnant natural area (URNA), located in the urban or suburb area, less disturbed by dwellers in the process of urbanization, is an important part of complex urban ecosystem and provides significant opportunity for urban sustainable development. Despite that there is a considerable amount of scientific researches on the urban nature in urban and suburb area, the comprehensive research of URNA is still rare. After analyzing the concept and value of URNA, this paper presented a methodology for comprehensive evaluation of URNA by adopting methods of document analysis, prior-selection process, analytic hierarchy process and vector resemblance-degree. As a result, the comprehensive evaluation index of URNA includes target level A, rule level B (ecological environment value, ecological recreation value, social culture value, scientific research value), index level C (diversity, singularity, nature, area, stability, recreation, landscape element, aesthetics, history, scientific), and index level D (20 items). Each index weight of comprehensive evaluation system of URNA of Shanghai was confirmed finally.