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trends and future of sustainable development - TransEco

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GROUPING AND RANKING THE EU-27 COUNTRIES BYTHEIR SUSTAINABILITY PERFORMANCE MEASUREDBY THE EUROSTAT SUSTAINABILITY INDICATORSFrancesca Allievi, Jyrki Luukkanen, Juha Panula-Ontto <strong>and</strong> Jarmo VehmasFinl<strong>and</strong> Futures Research CentreUniversity <strong>of</strong> TurkuABSTRACT – This paper presents the results <strong>of</strong> a sustainability indicator study on the EU-27countries where the countries are grouped by hierarchical cluster analysis on the basis <strong>of</strong> theirperformance measured with the used sustainability indicators. The used sustainability indicators canthemselves be grouped into social, environmental <strong>and</strong> economic indicator groups, reflecting thedifferent “aspects” <strong>of</strong> sustainability. In the study, indicators in the three groups have also beencalculated into aggregate indicators <strong>and</strong> the EU-27 countries can be compared <strong>and</strong> ranked accordingto their performance measured by these aggregate indicators.1. Introduction to the EU-27 case studyThis case study was developed within the FP7 project SMILE (Synergies in Multi-scale Inter-Linkages <strong>of</strong>Eco-social systems, more information available at: http://www.smile-fp7.eu/ ) <strong>and</strong> was one <strong>of</strong> the casestudies designed to assess the sustainability in the EU context from the economic, environmental <strong>and</strong>social point <strong>of</strong> view. Specifically this case study was carried out as part <strong>of</strong> task 3.7, which requested astudy where EU27 countries are grouped in terms <strong>of</strong> their sustainability performance, assessed by usinga set <strong>of</strong> sustainability indicators. These will be described in detail later on. The grouping <strong>of</strong> the countriesconsidered is carried out by applying hierarchical cluster analysis to the selected indicators.Sustainability performance is evaluated also through the calculation <strong>of</strong> aggregate indicators for thedifferent dimensions <strong>of</strong> sustainability, so that it is possible to rank the countries in terms <strong>of</strong> theirperformance.The aim <strong>of</strong> this paper is therefore to present both the methodology used <strong>and</strong> the results <strong>of</strong> thiscluster analysis <strong>and</strong> <strong>of</strong> the aggregate indicators created.9

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