Methodology to select a set of urban sustainability indicators to measure the state of the city, and performance assessment

This paper proposes a methodology for establishing a set of sustainability indicators as a baseline to measure the state of a city, and after appropriate actions are taken, to assess performance, to determine if changes point to improvements regarding goals. The methodology starts with choosing a procedure for identification, scope, evaluation, and level of indicators to build the initial dataset. As a second step, produces a reduced set of indicators,complying with all criteria imposed, and selected under the condition of extracting the maximum amount of information from the initial dataset. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.