Ecological and Economic System Health Assessment Based on Fuzzy Set Pair Analysis: A Case Study of Northwest Region, China

Due to the increasingly serious environmental pollution and destruction, especially humans' unreasonable activities, the ecological and economic system (EES) issues of Northwest region in China have attracted more and more attention of the researchers. Aiming at evaluating its ecological and economic system health, a multi-objective evaluation framework called Pressure-State-Response (PSR) was established to describe the ecological and economic health situations. Meanwhile, an integrative set pair model combining set pair analysis (SPA) and fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) was proposed to assess the ecological and economic system. Then the EES status of five northwest provinces (Shanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia and Xinjiang) of Northwest region in China was evaluated during 1985 to 2009. The EES development trends of five provinces are obtained. In general, the health values of five provinces showed a rising trend. The health values of five provinces grew rapidly during 1985 to 2000. After 2000, the health values of five provinces still followed the present growth trend, but the growth is relatively smooth. The results show that the method proposed is effective for assessing the health of ecological and economic system.