Sustainable Indicators in Spatial and Temporal Domains: Proposal of an Ontological Framework

The increasing climatic change and other environmental threats have rendered rapid and effective urban growth a key policy issue. The current research looks at interlinkages between different urban sustainability indicators and seeks an understanding of how Sustainable Development Indicators (SDIs) with social, economic, and environmental dimensions are conceptualized and outlined in frameworks. This has purposes of showing the need for well-directed growth and understanding the potential reasons for and the consequences of having such frameworks. The ontological framework desumed by this work helps address the problem of sustainable urban development in the context of spatial planning by using an integrative evaluation framework approach that considers environmental, economic, and social indicators. The framework assesses sustainability of settlement places considering several characteristics such as population density, employment structure, the compactness of housing, transportation system, and ecological effects. It encompasses the policy, conceptual systems, sets of indicator, process of sustainability indexing, support apparatus for policies. The indicators’ based approach offered by the analysis model makes measurement and comparison possible regarding sustainability levels reported and provides evidence for education and policymaking regarding the urban and environmental problems. In terms of future growth of the model, the focus will be on how to make it more comprehensive and more accurate as a means through which sustainable development of cities is achieved. The framework examines the system of spatial representation and the usage of sustainability indicators in downscaling strategies.