Multicriteria Decision Analysis Applied to Sponge City Construction in China: A Case Study.

To address stormwater management, China initiated the construction of sponge cities (SPCs) in 2014. Sponge city construction in China has previously been evaluated using subjective expert methods. Based on China's SPC evaluation regulations, the evaluation criteria system was divided into 6 categories and 22 indicators. This study presents a multicriteria approach to evaluating SPC construction through multicriteria attributes value theory (MAVT). Coupled with the entropy method, this approach can reduce errors caused by individual methods. This work improved the evaluation method from a subjective to an objective method. Additionally, the sensitivity of an alternative to these criteria was conducted. The analysis reveals the inner relationship between the SPC alternative and the criteria. The city of Hebi, an actual SPC project, was selected as a case study. The findings indicate that the proposed approach is efficient and simple. It can help decision makers better understand SPC performance, and it is a pilot SPC evaluation method using relatively objective means. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2019;15:703–713. © 2019 SETAC. Key Points: Sponge city (SPC) construction in China has previously been evaluated using subjective expert methods divided into 6 categories and 22 indicators.Multicriteria attributes value theory (MAVT) coupled with the entropy method is a workable and simple approach to evaluate SPC construction in China.This integrated approach can reduce errors caused by individual methods, and it can help decision makers better understand SPC performance.Sponge city evaluation should be based on SPC‐specific conditions; the order will be influenced by the sensitivity of criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]