The sixt week friday 11 april 2014 Sustainability

To measure sustainability, a number of indicators are used.

Common indicators are the environmental indicator, economic indicator, social indicator

Indicator	Example
Environmental	Soil erosion electricity consumption  water consumption
Economic	Access to health care Employment  People living below poverty line
Social	Voters participating in primary elections Suicide rates (per 1000 population) Demographics

 

How do we know that these indicators are really useful to determine the sustainability?

First we need to know how to select the indicators.

In order to select, you first need to know:

·         What our goals are

·         Who our target audience is

·         Choose your criteria (after community consensus)

·         How to weight each criteria (which criteria are more desirable)

·         Look at the score of every indicator

·         Look at the total and average the score

And furthermore data and results must be collected for every indicator. The results can show a trend or a moving towards a target. Also indicators and their importance can be described, trends and changes can be outlined, progress can be evaluated, they can be discussed with other indicators and recommendations can be provided.  

(http://www.epa.gov/greenkit/indicator.htm)