Research on Comprehensive Evaluation of Urban Material Metabolism Based on MFA-A Case Study of Chengyang District in Qingdao

With expanding exchange of material and energy between socio-economic system and eco-environment system, great change appears in structure and organization form of material social metabolism. It becomes one of mainstream of urban sustainable development to optimize and reorganize process of material metabolism. Based on method of Material Flow Analysis, the paper establishes indicator system of comprehensive evaluation of urban material metabolism. The indicator system comprises 37 indicators, which are divided into five kinds of indicators including socio-economic development, resources consumption, environmental pressure,metabolic intensity, control performance. Analytic Hierarchy Process is utilized to determine weight of indicators, and material metabolic level of Chengyang District is assessed. The results indicate that several indices show different trends: obvious growth appears in indices of SDI, RCI, and CPI; EPI and MII decreases slightly; CEI keeps fluctuant and slow rise. Higher resources consumption is the main problem of material metabolism in Chengyang District and key road to high level of material metabolism is control of material input and improvement of resources productivity. On the other side, the results show that it is an effective method of comprehensive evaluation of urban material metabolism established in this study, which is helpful to identify main problems in urban material metabolism and to provide policy support for local economic development and environmental management.