Sustainable regional development index applied to municipalities of the cariri metropolitan region

Abstract

Sustainability indexes or indicators are useful tools for measuring and evaluating the development of territories and organizations. The present paper aimed to compare the level of sustainable development achieved by the nine municipalities of the Cariri Metropolitan Region, Brazil (MRC), according to environmental, economic, and social indicators. The updated data was selected based on the document IDS BRASIL (2014) of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), and obtained from platforms like the IBGE Cidades, the IPECE yearbook and Atlas Brazil. The data was normalized to better compare their performance regarding various sustainability factors. After being transformed into indicators, the values were then classified in critical, warning, acceptable or ideal. The basic set of information that involves income and labor, education, health, safety, infrastructure, access to public policies of income distribution, drainage, basic sanitation, urbanization, vegetation, wealth, among others, and their respective performances, were compiled and averaged for each city. The most developed cities of the region are Juazeiro do Norte, Crato and Barbalha, respectively. On the other hand, the city that needs the most attention regarding its development is Santana do Cariri.