Xiaoli Tai, Wu Xiao & Yuxuan Tang, “A quantitative assessment of vulnerability using social-economic-natural compound ecosystem framework in coal mining cities”，Journal of Cleaner Production，2020(258)

ABSTRACT: Coal resources play an important role in socioeconomic development around the world. Yet the development driven by coal mining is accompanied by ecological damage, social instability, and economic vulnerability, which seriously hinder the sustainable development of coal mining cities. It is, thus, urgent to realize the sustainable development of coal mining cities, premised on comprehensive and scientific analysis of these cities’ vulnerability characteristics. In this study, based on the analysis of the social-economic-natural compound ecosystem (SENCE), we constructed a vulnerability evaluation indicator system (28 indicators) for coal mining cities. Took cities producing more than ten million ton of coal in China in 2015 as examples, the weight of every indicator was obtained using entropy weight method. In addition, cities were ranked and classified based on vulnerability characteristics of three subsystems. Our findings suggest that preventing soil erosion, accelerating the resolution of historical problems, promoting green mining, and encouraging renewable energy should be adopted to reduce natural vulnerability; resettling the unemployed and adjusting employment structure are effective in enhancing the sustainability of social subsystems; changing industrial structure, encouraging self-employment, as well as implementing scientific and technological innovation should be considered to realize economic sustainability.