Journal Article

A new assessment approach for urban ecosystem health basing on maximum information entropy method

Zhao, Shuai, Chai, Lihe

2015

Overview

Information entropy is introduced to describe the interactions between diverse agents in urban ecosystems. Basing on maximum information entropy method, a holistic structural parameter and its dynamic equation are derived to reflect urban ecosystem health (UEH). In this way, a new UEH assessment model has been proposed. We then apply the model to assess the UEH of Beijing, Dalian, Shanghai, Wuhan, Xiamen and Guangzhou in China. It is shown that the holistic structural parameter, the radar chart, and the associated correlations from the model can reveal the health features of different cities. According to the calculated ranges of the holistic structural parameter, a new UEH assessment grade standard is suggested and applied to the UEH assessment of some typical cities in China. It is demonstrated that the new model and the new assessment grade standard are precise and readily operational, which can be widely used in other urban ecosystems.

• Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg,Springer Nature B.V
• Subject: Aquatic Pollution / Assessments / Chemistry and Earth Sciences / China / Computational Intelligence / Computer Science / Earth and Environmental Science / Earth Sciences / Ecological risk assessment / Ecology / Ecosystems / Entropy / Entropy (Information theory) / Entropy (Information theory) (Information) / Environment / Math. Appl. in Environmental Science / Mathematical models / Original Paper / Physics / Probability Theory and Stochastic Processes / Statistics for Engineering / Sustainable development / Urban areas / Waste Water Technology / Water Management / Water Pollution Control