China's regional sustainability assessment on mineral resources: Results from an improved analytic hierarchy process-based normal cloud model

Abstract

Mineral resources are still the rigid demand of China's development and their sustainability assessment is central to regional development. This paper introduces an improved Analytic Hierarchy Process-based Normal cloud model which incorporated randomness and fuzziness and presents an index system applicable to empirical analysis on 31 provinces of China. The weight system of evaluation indicators is determined by an improved analytic hierarchy process (IAHP) approach with good accessibility and attainability. Regional disparities of resources sustainability are demonstrated by spatial distributions of mineral resources sustainability with the help of GIS technology. The sustainability level is determined by the combination of resources, environment and society dimensions. The results indicate that the areas with high sustainability do not necessarily happen in resource-rich regions. The most important implications are the relatively lower sustainability of the developed areas and the higher sustainability in western provinces. The scores for indicators reveal that compared with western and central areas, the coastal provinces are less sustainable in environmental carrying capacity, but with higher sustainable social supporting capacity. Robustness test notes that the results are sensitive to the adjustment of weight system due to the preference of decision makers. Finally, differentiated regional strategies for improving overall sustainability are proposed.