Urban ecological security assessment and forecasting using integrated DEMATEL-ANP and CA-Markov models: A case study on Kolkata Metropolitan Area, India

Abstract Due to rapid urbanization, Indian cities have faced serious environmental problems, including pollution, loss of urban green space, increasing heat island phenomena, and destruction of the urban ecosystem, over the past few decades. Urban ecological security (UES) measures the degree of urbanization pressure and level of ecological sensitivity. Currently, urban ecological security assessment (UESA) is an important aspect of sustainable urban development. Accurate assessment of ecological security status has become a real problem because of differential evaluation methods produced variable results. The present study aims to address these shortcomings using integrated DEMATEL-ANP model to select the influencing factors and assess ecological security of Kolkata Metropolitan Area (KMA). Moreover, a combined cellular automata and Markov chain model was applied to simulate land-use/land-cover change and predict the future state of UES in KMA. The result shows that land use land cover change rate, built-up density, green area change intensity index and landscape connectivity index are the most influencing factors in UES. The present study can enrich the methods in the field of UESA and the findings of this study can provide valuable and scientific guidance to optimize land-use planning and potentially improving the ecological security of an urban area.