Evaluation of coal-resource-based cities transformation based on CRITIC-TOPSIS model

The transformation of coal-resource-based cities (CRBCs) is one of the important aspect of sustainable development. However, little work has been done on the systematic study of CRBCs. Therefore, this paper constructs a comprehensive evaluation index system from three aspects of economy, society and environment to evaluate the level of transformation and development of 23 CRBCs in China from 2017 to 2021. The proposed model is a multi-criteria decision-making method based on the Criteria Importance Through Inter-criteria Correlation (CRITIC) and the improved Technique in Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). The results show that the comprehensive transformation effects of CRBCs range from 0.308 to 0.660. 13 cities (accounting for 56.5%) demonstrate a slowly growth trend, with the maximum annual growth rate of 1.05%. 10 cities (accounting for 43.5%) show a small downward trend on the comprehensive transformation effect. The main reason for the low transformation is that social development lag behind environmental and economic development. Based on this, provide some suggestions for the transformation of CRBCs.