Freight data-driven research on evaluation indexes for urban agglomeration development degree

Abstract

A reasonable comprehensive evaluation of the degree of urban agglomeration development is of great significance for its sustainable development. Although there are some studies on the evaluation of urban agglomeration development degree from the overall development level, only a few studies consider internal development equilibrium and internal interaction intensity. This work uses freight trip data as the main empirical data to establish three alternative evaluation indexes named the overall freight intensity, the internal freight intensity equilibrium level, and the internal freight interaction relative intensity to reflect the urban agglomeration's overall development level, internal equilibrium level, and internal interaction level, respectively. Then, this work weights the above three alternative indexes to comprehensively evaluate the comprehensive development degree of 14 Chinese urban agglomerations. Finally, this work classifies these urban agglomerations into three stages according to the comprehensive evaluation values. The research results could help us to reasonably evaluate the degree of comprehensive development of urban agglomeration.