A framework for prioritizing urban ecological infrastructure (UEI) implementation tasks based on residents' ecological demands and government policies

Abstract

With rapid urbanization, balancing urban ecological infrastructure (UEI) construction and residents' ecological demands (RED) has become an imperative but challenging issue for sustainable development. This study develops an integrated framework to systematically prioritize UEI implementation based on localized RED and government policies. We incorporate the Kano model and quality function deployment (QFD) approach to quantify the complex associations between various resident needs and existing policies. Taking Chengdu City as a case study, resident surveys and policy reviews are conducted to construct the demand-policy linkage matrix and determine the importance of UEI tasks. Results reveal that, (1) flood control capacity is most prioritized by RED, followed by wetland area and less PM2.5, while cultural service demands rank lower; (2) Forest coverage, green space development, wetland construction and park construction emerge as priority UEI implementation tasks that can maximize fulfilling RED. This novel framework enables adaptive customization of UEI planning for different cities through configurable modeling. It provides a valuable decision support tool that enables optimizing or improving the prioritization of UEI implementation tasks based on residents' preferences. The research results have important reference value for the prioritization of UEI implementation tasks.

Keywords: Demands; Ecological infrastructure; Ecosystem service; Kano model; Priority of construction tasks; Quality function deployment.