Metropolitan Sustainability System Index (KB-25-005-001)

WUR Metropolitan Sustainability System Index or ‘Green diagnosis’ develops a scientific evidence based diagnosis which is thoroughly embedded in peer reviewed state of the art LifeScience knowledge. It combines different dashboards on the following fields: Urban Liveability and Health; Urban resilience to climate change; Resource efficient Urban Metabolism; Urban Food security and footprint. The fifth dashboard checks they ecosystem healthy and productivity which is basic to the ecosystem services that support these other four themes. The documented scientific evidence base contributes to the objectivity of the Index and the dashboards and enable to upgrade in line with new scientific insights on a regular basis. This basis is a distinguishing feature compared to other indices for sustainability. Wageningen UR can provide  a permanent update following the state of the art.

The Green diagnosis tool equips WUR experts with a common tool to help cities with the diagnosis of their city or region as far as the natural basis and claims on nature of urban life are concerned, and relations to urban wellbeing and prosperity. The latter in terms of quality of life, sustainability of urban livelihoods and economy.

The dashboards (at the next level from the Green diagnosis or System Index and more in depth, zooming in) are providing cities with more sectoral insights helping them with the identification of more specific problem areas. For solutions the urban stakeholders will be referred to transition pathways or tools for business and local governments.

In the course of 2017 and 2018 the index and dashboards are applied both in Dutch cities and abroad in cooperation with cities and business. The application of the dashboard considers the different types of urban regions or cities in terms of economic, demographic and cultural situation. For this it uses a typology of cities and urban regions on these social dimensions. Also governance cultures will be considered during the applications. This assures that the diagnosis can be adapted to different contexts and is fit for different policy foci of different actors.