Disaggregating Ecosystem Benefits: An Integrated Environmental-Deprivation Index

The valuation of ecosystem services has become an integral part of smart urban planning practices. Traditionally designed to bridge ecology and economy through economic language and logic (e.g., goods and services), this conceptual framework has developed into an effective tool for interdisciplinary work. The concept of ecosystem services is used to improve the management of ecosystems for human well-being. However, gaps in how to govern ecological benefits remain. Specifically, identifying which stakeholders benefit the most from the provision of ecosystem services remains largely unaddressed. This study examines the spatial discordance between ecosystem services and the residential stakeholders who may benefit. Using a landscape approach to quantify urban ecosystem services, an area-based composite index was developed for the City of Toronto, Canada, based on the three pillars of sustainability in order to identify potentially vulnerable populations. This method combines the use of principal component analysis (PCA) and spatial multicriteria decision analysis (GIS-MCDA) to combine and weight a select grouping of socioeconomic and ecological indicators. In addition, two sets of enumeration units (i.e., dissemination areas and census tracts) were evaluated to assess the potential impact of measurement scale on subsequent decision or policy outcomes. Results indicate the spatial interdependencies between ecological and socioeconomic processes in an urban setting, offering a unique framework for novel planning and policy intervention strategies. The influence of measurement scale was demonstrated, creating an opportunity to assess an appropriate policy scale by which to measure and evaluate trends over time and space. This approach seeks to provide a flexible and intuitive planning tool that can help to achieve goals relating to urban sustainability, resiliency and equity.