Abstract
The paper presents a new distance measure useful for integrated environmental assessments. It is a generalized weighted Euclidean distance whose weights are calculated based on the coefficients of determination among environmental quality indicators in the data set. The proposed distance allows all environmental quality indicators to be used directly without any reduction in dimension (e.g., as in principal component analysis). Hypothetical and case-study examples are given to illustrate the distance measure. Examples demonstrate that the proposed distance is suitable and valuable for integrating multiple indicators into a single index, a common task in integrated environmental assessment.
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Tran, L.T., O’Neill, R.V. & Smith, E.R. A Generalized Distance Measure for Integrating Multiple Environmental Assessment Indicators. Landscape Ecol 21, 469–476 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-005-5324-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-005-5324-y