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A composite index for sustainability assessment of health, safety and

environmental performance in municipalities of megacities

Mahsa Mapar, Mohammad Javad Jafari, Nabiollah Mansouri, Reza

Arjmandi, Reza Azizinezhad, Tomás B. Ramos

PII: S2210-6707(20)30151-7
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2020.102164
Reference: SCS 102164

To appear in: Sustainable Cities and Society

Received Date: 5 August 2019

Revised Date: 19 March 2020
Accepted Date: 20 March 2020

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 A composite index for sustainability assessment of health, safety and
environmental performance in municipalities of megacities1

Mahsa Mapar* 2

CENSE, Center for Environmental and Sustainability Research, Department of Environmental Sciences and
Engineering, School of Science and Technology, NOVA University Lisbon, Campus da Caparica, 2829-516
Caparica, Portugal
m.mapar@fct.unl.pt

Mohammad Javad Jafari

School of Public Health, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

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jafari1952@yahoo.com

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Nabiollah Mansouri

Department of Environmental Management, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran,
Iran

nmansourin@gmail.com
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Reza Arjmandi
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Department of Environmental Management, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran,
Iran

hrezaarjmandi@gmail.com
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Reza Azizinezhad

Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran,
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Iran

r.azizi@srbiau.ac.ir
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2
. Corresponding author
m.mapar@fct.unl.pt

Address: CENSE, Center for Environmental and Sustainability Research, Department of Environmental
Sciences and Engineering, School of Science and Technology, NOVA University Lisbon, Campus da
Caparica, 2829-516 Caparica, Portugal

Tel: +351933500618

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 Tomás B. Ramos

CENSE, Center for Environmental and Sustainability Research, Department of Environmental Sciences and
Engineering, School of Science and Technology, NOVA University Lisbon, Campus da Caparica, 2829-516
Caparica, Portugal

tabr@fct.unl.pt

Highlights

 The objective is to develop an index to assess HSE sustainability performance of

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municipalities.

 Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) method was adopted to determine the main factors.

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 The safety, HSE and environment themes are the most important in HSE sustainability


performance.
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The “Health-Environment” intersection theme gained the highest score in Tehran
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municipalities.
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 Tehran ranked third in HSE performance which indicates HSE sustainability are under

developing.
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Abstract
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Sustainability assessment tools have provided a way for local authorities to assess their performance
towards sustainable development. However, a major problem of existing methods is the lack of an
integrated assessment approach to cover significant aspects of municipalities’ activities, namely
Health, Safety and Environment (HSE). This study was conducted to address the aggregation of these
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key municipal aspects by combining them into an integrated assessment index. Tehran municipalities
are used as a case study. The Exploratory Factor Analysis method was applied to reduce the
complexity of HSE indicators and build the index. The final results integrated a set of 62 indicators
into 20 factors based on 6 HSE sustainability themes. In addition, the Sustainability Assessment Index
(SAI) was formed by combining 6 sub-indices based on the HSE themes. Finally, the level of HSE
sustainability performance in the municipality was divided into four levels, regarding their progress.
The findings showed that the best HSE sustainability performance was performed on the Health-
Environment intersection theme. Moreover, the majority of Tehran municipalities were classified in
level 3 (moderate) on HSE sustainability performance, emerging the need of reviewing the plans and

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programs that are related to municipal sustainable development by considering district-centered HSE
issues.

Key words: sustainability assessment, municipalities, exploratory factor analysis, health, safety,
environment.

Introduction
1.1 Background
Megacities have been increasingly promoted mainly in the developing world that is now gaining
ground in Asia, Latin America and Africa (Mori and Christodoulou, 2012). Megacities are defined as
urban areas of ten million or more population (Demograohia, 2015) that face the accelerating
challenges on social, economic, and environmental issues (Carli et al., 2018). However, the precise
threshold of ten million is not as important as the fact that cities of eight or ten million face
significantly different sustainability challenges from those cities of a hundred thousand or one million

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people (Mori et al., 2015). Some challenges such as air pollution, transportation, waste management,
job opportunities, delivery of services to the public, and governance issues tend to be much bigger
in megacities than in small or medium-sized cities. (Mangi et al., 2020). As asserted by Sorensen and

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Okata (2011, p.5) “in a profound sense, megacities are inherently unsustainable, with their vast
consumption of resources drawn from distant elsewhere, and equally vast production of wastes that
are routinely exported elsewhere”. On the other hand, not only the sustainability challenges but also
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the way of tackling these challenges by policy-makers and governance in megacities are different in
comparison with small cities (Mori et al., 2015). Therefore, city size is one of the most important
elements to assess whether a system is generally becoming more or less sustainable, as well as
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specific information on which characteristics need the most improvement (Mayer, 2008).
To help policy-makers in these respects, sustainability assessment tools such as indicators and indices
have been developed. These tools direct megacities managers in developing conditions that would
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be conducive to sustainability (Mangi et al., 2020; Michael et al., 2014). However, setting a list of
adequate indicators in a complex urban system is a highly challenging task (Ruá et al., 2019) and
subsequently, it is difficult to evaluate the performance of a megacity based on too many indicators
(Ciommi et al., 2017). Therefore, when a large number of indicators is used, there is a need to
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aggregate them into a composite index to provide a simplified, coherent, and multidimensional view
of a system (Mayer, 2008) without losing the original meaning.
On the other hand, according to the 3rd and 11th Sustainable Development Goals 2030 (United
Nations, 2015) cities should provide healthy lives, promote well-being and safety. According to the
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definition of wellbeing in the Cambridge dictionary: “wellbeing is the state of being healthy, or
happy” (Univ. of Cambridge, 2019). It consists of three interrelated components including life
satisfaction, pleasant effect, and unpleasant effect (Dodge et al., 2012) which are relevant to the
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health aspects of sustainability. Related works on local sustainability also showed that municipal
health aspects (Badland et al., 2014; Canavese et al., 2014) and safety issues (Dempsey et al., 2012;
Mapar et al., 2017) have positive effects on local sustainable development and should be considered
key aspects to manage, assess and report. At the local level, municipalities as a provider of a variety
of services for citizens are widely recognized as sustainability leaders (Domingues et al., 2015) and
play an intermediary role between citizens and public bodies (Björklund and Gustafsson, 2015). Since
a large number of municipalities’ activities in megacities are directly related to Health, Safety and
Environmental (HSE) issues, the role of municipalities has been highlighted to improve the HSE
aspects of sustainable development at the municipal level.

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However, despite the various international efforts to assess sustainability by indices (e.g. Panda et
al., 2016; Singh et al., 2012), only few of these indices adopt an integrated approach to consider all
aspects of HSE issues simultaneously (Tanguay et al., 2010; Zhao and Li, 2017; Zoeteman et al., 2016).
An example of the lack of an integrated sustainability index to simultaneously cover all aspects of
sustainability in megacities could be observed in Huang et al. (2016)’s study that applied a set of
seven different sustainability assessment indices, (e.g. Ecological Footprint (EF), Environmental
Performance Index (EPI), City Development Index (CDI), and Human Development Index (HDI))
instead of applying an integrated index to cover the main dimensions of sustainability in Chinese
megacities. Meanwhile, many researchers are concerned that current sustainability programs tend
to be purely environmentally focused with little attention given to the social dimension (Liu, 2018)
and subsequently, social issues, such as health and safety are less developed (Cunningham et al.,
2010; Heidari et al., 2019; Visvaldis et al., 2013). On the other hand, although the public sector,
including municipalities, is the provider of services for citizens, the sustainability performance
assessment for the public sector is still in its beginning stage (Domingues et al., 2015; Figueira et al.,
2018; Tort, 2010). Therefore, some queries still stand out among several still-unanswered questions:

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How health, safety and environmental aspects have effects on each other as well as on parallel lines
of sustainability? Which type of assessment tool could be more beneficial to measure all aspects of
HSE sustainability simultaneously, considering their interlinkages, and how? This paper follows the

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previous research conducted by Mapar et al. (2017), that includes the development of a set of 80
HSE sustainability indicators for assessing the performance of Tehran municipalities. Build upon that
research, the main aim of this article is to reduce the number of proposed indicators in the previous
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study and reach a smaller number of factors by integrating them on a composite index, to facilitate
the assessment process of sustainability performance in municipalities of megacities.
1.2 Relationships between health, safety, and environmental aspects of local sustainability
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Health, safety, and environmental aspects of sustainability are parallel challenges in sustainable
development goals (Cunningham et al., 2010). Without healthy people and safe places, the
environment and society would be exposed to danger. Unhealthy people in unsafe conditions cannot
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have maximum efficiency, and therefore, the organizations would experience difficult economic
conditions that also have effects on society (Molamohamadi, 2014). While the urban environment
offers many advantages for health, it also offers many challenges to citizens’ health as mentioned by
several studies (Bartlett, 2013; Mapar et al., 2017; Pan American Health Organization, 2013; Yang
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and Liu, 2018). For example, the green space coverage (ISO, 2014; Nader et al., 2008) and public
parks and gardens (City of Fort Collins Natural Resources, 2011), as environmental indicators, play a
positive role in the health aspects of sustainability because when the citizens visit the environment
e.g. an urban park, they also enjoy its benefits on their health (Chen et al., 2019). Besides, climate
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change (Ahvenniemi et al., 2017; Balaban, 2012) and traffic pollutants such as noise (Mapar et al.,
2017) as two negative environmental indicators have also negative health effects on particular
groups of citizens such as children and elderly (Fox and Alldred, 2016). Also, the quality of urban
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environment (Chen et al., 2019) and its equality of distribution is increasingly important for human
health and wellbeing, so residents with greater access to economic or social resources have greater
access to the health benefits of urban environment and have less exposure to environmental hazards
(Schulz et al., 2018). In this regard, Bartlett (2013) indicated “All environmentally friendly behaviours
aim to protect citizens’.

Moreover, there is a direct connection between safety and health. One example is the and negative
effects of health promotion with safety behaviours (Cunningham et al., 2010; Mapar et al., 2017),
e.g. the negative effects of natural hazards and disasters such as earthquakes, and fires that cause
major loss of human safety, and major effects on citizens’ mental health and well-being (United

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Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, 2002). Integrated health and safety
performance impacts across the whole society through injuries and ill-health and also on economic
and community vitality, as investigated in previous studies (Cunningham et al., 2010;
Molamohamadi, 2014; Ozer, 2013). The improper link between health and safety under one
integrated system will often lead to accidents, injuries, and higher insurance costs and subsequently
exceed the financial losses due to injuries and ill health (Amponsah-Tawiah, 2013). But, most
organizations consider these as separate initiatives and manage them in separate departments, using
separate programs, budgets, measures, and reward systems (Ozer, 2013).

Therefore, it is clear that health, safety and environmental issues of sustainability are undeniably
intertwined and should be considered as a necessary infrastructure on the social dimension of
sustainability (Atanda, 2019; Cunningham et al., 2010) as well as economic one (Molamohamadi,
2014; Ozer, 2013). By integrating HSE issues of sustainability in a unique program, the organizations
could benefit from the higher utilization of their financial resources rather than considering them in
the separated program (Molamohamadi, 2014; Ozer, 2013). Some examples of its benefits on

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economic dimension of sustainability are the cost savings on administrative affairs of HSE such as
educations (Nader et al., 2008), administration formation and planning (Mapar et al., 2017) and risk
control (Research and Planning Center of Tehran, 2012) through using a unique package of HSE

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budgets, as well as reducing the number of employees who are working on HSE executive
departments. For this reason, many organizations continuously underestimate the cost of illness and
injuries on their organizational financial programs (Cooper, 2014).

1.3 HSE Sustainability assessment tools in local contexts

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Sustainability assessment tools range from indicators to comprehensive models (Yigitcanlar et al.,
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2015) and composite indices (Boggia et al., 2018; Gasparatos, 2010; Ndeke, 2011). They can be used
to confirm the outcomes and impacts of municipal processes and activities (Smedby and Neij, 2013).
It also provides the ability to decide what actions should be taken by local authorities to make the
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cities more sustainable (Singh et al., 2012; Yigitcanlar et al., 2015). According to Lozano and Huisingh
(2011), sustainability assessment is “a voluntary activity to assess the current state of an organization
in triple-bottom line of sustainable development.” Since the concept of sustainability varies from
region to region (Verma and Raghubanshi, 2018), owing to differences between cultural, political,
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social and economic conditions in different countries (Jones, 2010), therefore, each sustainability
assessment tool should be adjusted for particular contexts, reflecting the specific conditions of each
case study (Braulio-Gonzalo et al., 2015; Zijp et al., 2017).
Current literature on urban sustainability assessment has largely drawn the wide range of different
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tools, which can be categorized into two groups, as follows: (i) The first group includes a set of
measurable individual indicators as the most frequent tools to assess the sustainable development
at local scale purpose (Ahvenniemi et al., 2017; Coelho et al., 2010; Verma and Raghubanshi, 2018).
Several studies have compiled a wide lists of sustainability indicators at this level, which include:
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Beirut, Lebanon (Nader et al., 2008), Malaysia (Hezri and Hasan, 2004; Ibrahim et al., 2015; Tanguay
et al., 2010), Italy (Scipioni et al., 2008), UK (Dempsey et al., 2012), Austria (Zoeteman et al., 2016),
Spain (Braulio-Gonzalo et al., 2015), among many others. Using indicators-based methods as
compared to other assessment approaches seek to achieve the integration of all sustainability issues
by using a wide range of indicators in different domains of sustainability (Adinyira et al., 2007) (ii) The
second group of assessment tools includes composite indices which means that the indicators can be
combined or aggregated (Agovino et al., 2018; Gasparatos, 2010) by mathematical or heuristic
functions (Ramos et al., 2004) into composite index in response to facilitating the interpretation of
indicators of a given phenomenon (Tanguay et al., 2010). A composite index has become a major tool

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to aggregate different indicators into one single measure to evaluate complex multidimensional
phenomena especially in social sciences (Agovino et al., 2018). Note that although sustainability
indicators help in knowing the direction and distance from the target (Panda et al., 2016), whenever
a large number of indicators exist, it is more difficult to make comparison across cities and countries,
over time and space (Ciommi et al., 2017). It might be because of time limitation, high expenses and
complex process of assessing sustainability when we are dealing with too many indicators. Therefore,
there is a need to synthesize information derived from a large set of indicators in a form of integrated
tool such as composite index to reach a smaller and controllable number of variables (Gasparatos,
2010; Michael et al., 2014) and provide a chance of better integration of decision-making process in
sustainability issues (Ciommi et al., 2017).
But despite some few efforts to develop health and safety indices in the context of sustainability (e.g.
human well-being index (Mori and Christodoulou, 2012) and inherent safety index (Khan and
Amyotte, 2004)), there are no composite indices that comprehensively measure the health, safety
and environmental aspects of municipal sustainable development in an integrated way. One example
is the study conducted by Singh et al. (Singh et al., 2012) which introduced 12 groups of sustainability

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assessment indices such that one group of which is the sustainability index for cities, but none of the
presented indices in the urban group addressed safety issue. Another example is China urban
sustainability index (Li et al., 2014), which developed for megacities and divided the sustainability

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assessment issues into four categories: economy, society, resources, and the environment. The
significant point is that the resources and environment categories gained 50% of total weight and the
greatest focus was on the environmental dimension. An early Urban Sustainability Index (USI) that
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was developed to compare the urban sustainability trend in two megacities: Karachi (Pakistan) and
Beijing (China), consists of 36 indicators that only two of them were relevant to fire issues. However,
these two indicators are also classified in the environmental dimensions and still, more focus was on
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the environmental dimension (Mangi et al., 2020). In addition, the sustainable cities index of
Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) (Trigg et al., 2010) presents an index based on three
indicator-based ‘baskets’ including Environmental Performance, Quality of Life, and Resilience; but
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most of the evaluation indicators are located in environmental dimension and there are only one
indicator of health issues in the quality of life basket. Also, the City Development Index (CDI)
suggested by the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (HABITAT) (UNCHS, 2001) consists
of five sub-indices, where the third sub-index considers health issues such as life expectancy and the
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infant mortality rate (Böhringer and Jochem, 2007). However, in comparison with the two
environmental-related sub-indices, including infrastructure and waste, the weight of the health sub-
index is weaker, and there is no association with safety issues. Therefore, despite several initiatives
on developing sustainability indices for local level (Krajnc and Glavič, 2005; Panda et al., 2016; Singh
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et al., 2012), the existing aggregation tools are not sufficiently well established with respect to
covering all aspects of health, safety and environment simultaneously.
Regarding this background and to meet the afore-mentioned gaps and challenges, the main aim of
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the present study is to develop a composite assessment index considering all aspects of HSE
sustainability performance simultaneously in an integrated manner. The proposed tool reduces the
number of HSE municipal indicators using one of the multivariate techniques, Exploratory Factor
Analysis (EFA), to reach a smaller, measurable and comparable HSE assessment tool. It can also
provide the ability of comparison the state of HSE sustainability performance between different
municipalities by applying a quantitative index. The following section covers the research method.
The findings and discussion will be outlined in sections 3 and 4, respectively, and Section 5 will
provide the conclusions and recommendations for further researches.

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2. Research methods
As explored in section 1.3, to develop a municipal sustainability assessment tool, the number of
indicators must be whittled down to focus on some key “factors” rather than having to consider too
many indicators (Gasparatos, 2010; Michael et al., 2014). In this research, Exploratory Factor Analysis
(EFA) is used to reduce the indicators and discover the smaller number of factors influencing a large
number of variables (Yong and Pearce, 2013). The research methodology as shown in Fig. 1, includes
four main parts; i) develop a questionnaire survey, ii) propose latent variable using EFA, iii) built a
sustainability assessment index (SAI) based on the main factors, and iv) assess the level of HSE
sustainability performance in Tehran municipalities as a case study. The software SPSS 22 and Smart
PLS 3.0 were used for the analysis.
Fig. 1. Methodological research design.

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1. Developing survey
instrument
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2. Exploratory Factor Analysis
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(EFA)
Questionnaire
Survey 3. HSE Sustainability
Assessment Index (SAI)
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Validity and Initial reliability analysis

reliability
4. Assessing
Normalization of indicators
Extraction (PCA) the level of
values
HSE
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sustainability
Rotation (Varimax) Normalizing of factors and performance
themes weights in Tehran
municipalities
Factors of identification Calculation of sub-indices
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and loadings (SASI- Tn)

Developing composite
Index (SAI)
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2.1 The case of Tehran municipalities
The case study area, Tehran, the capital of Iran, is the 22 most populated megacities in the world,
where the population has doubled in the last twenty-year period, reached the number of 14 million
inhabitants in 2015, and changed from a small city to a major megacity. Tehran has been selected as
a case study because it faces serious health, safety and environmental challenges such as traffic jam
and air pollution owing to the rapid growth of the population and urbanization, as well as data
availability and the fact that Tehran city council's interest in the HSE sustainability assessment and
data availability. Fig. 2 shows the levels of local public administration of Tehran megacity.
Fig. 2. The levels of local public administration of Tehran megacity.
The first and main level is “municipal council”, with legislative power, including 15 councilors in
charge of supervising the operation of the 22 districts of Tehran municipality (Mapar et al., 2017).
The second level is Tehran core municipality, which is under the sponsorship of the municipal council.
The head of Tehran core municipality is ‘mayor of Tehran’, who has executive power in this area.
Tehran core municipality consists of 22 district municipalities each of which has a district municipality
mayor. All district mayors are under the supervision of the core municipality of Tehran. They are also

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responsible to report to the mayor of core municipality (Public and international relations

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Tehran
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municipal
council

Core municipality
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HSE office

22 District municipalities
22 HSE Representatives
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department of Tehran municipality, 2016)

Since 2009, an exclusive executive office called “Health, Safety and Environment (HSE)” has been
added to the Tehran core municipality, under the direct supervision of mayor of the Tehran core
municipality. In addition, the HSE office of Tehran municipality has 22 representatives in each district
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municipality, who are under the direct supervision of the HSE office.
2.2 Developing a survey instrument
To develop the index, a set of HSE indicators previously developed by Mapar et al. (2017) was applied
as primary data. This set (Table 1) included 80 municipal HSE indicators of Tehran municipality divided
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into 6 themes of HSE sustainability considering their interlinkage, including Health (H), Safety (S),
Environment (E), Health-Safety (HS), Health-Environment (HE), and Health, Safety and Environment
(HSE). Therefore, in the present study, the number of 6 EFA was conducted based on each theme.
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Table 1
The set of HSE municipal indicators for Tehran municipalities based on HSE themes (Mapar et al.,
2017).
Theme Indicator Code Theme Indicator Code
Health Drinking water in public places A4 Health/ Health and safety sport sites K4
Sanitary landfill D6 Safety Safe and healthy daily markets K6
Occupational diseases reduction K14 Occupational health and safety K15
Playing and recreation facilities M2 promotion programs
Sport facilities and services M3
B3
Community care M4 Vehicle technical inspection
B4

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 Theme Indicator Code Theme Indicator Code
Public access to health services M5 Health/ Air quality improvement D2
Environment Waste collection D10
Safety Mortality rate in public transport H14 Hazardous waste management E1
Accidents rate in public transport H15 Traffic noise control F1
Safe pedestrians pathways H16 Green space cover F2
Safe urban road networks H17 Public parks and gardens F8
Safe playing and recreation equipment K2 Pollution-absorbing plants H5
Safe cultural and religious sites K3 Green fuel in public transport
Safety for elderly and disabled people K7
Safe construction of urban buildings K9 HSE sustainability plans and projects in I1
Occupational accidents K13 Health/ municipality
Mortality rate of fire L1 Safety/ Municipality budget on HSE issues I3
Number of firefighters L2 Environment HSE urban rules I5
Number of fire bridge L3 HSE management systems I7
Preparedness of fire team L5 National councils for HSE sustainable I10
Response time for fire L6 development
Fire prevention L8 Citizens’ representatives in HSE affairs I11

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Mortality rate of disasters L9 HSE administration formation in I12
Disasters mitigation L11 municipality
Preparedness of emergency team L12 HSE initiatives and innovations in I13

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Emergency operation centers (EOC) L13 municipality level
Public education on emergency L14 Public HSE education for children J1
response Public HSE education for adults J2
Environment A2 HSE media programs J3
Water consumption on irrigation of
green spaces
Water loss
water reuse
A3
A5
C3
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Educational qualification of HSE
employees
Contractors HSE education
J6
J7

J9
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Fuel consumption in municipal C5 Citizens participation in HSE public J11
operation programs and meetings
Energy consumption in municipal C7 Volunteers for HSE plans/ projects J12
buildings and public places D1 Supporting of HSE non-governmental J13
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Developing new energy D4 organizations (NGO)s

Waste sorting at source D5 Participation in developing HSE schools J14
Energy extraction from waste D9 HSE risk identification K11
Compost collection G3 Risk reduction and control programs K12
Recycling D7 Contractors HSE pre-qualification K17
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Land use change G5 Monitoring contractors HSE K18

Green shopping G7 performance M9
Green infrastructures H1 Citizens satisfaction of municipal HSE
Green materials in municipal H2 services M10
operations I4 Quick response system to municipal HSE
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Capacity of public transport problems

Number of public transport trips
Electronic municipality
The questionnaire was developed based on the 80 indicators and sent to a group of 44 experts to
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determine the importance of each indicator. Since the accuracy of the results in EFA relies on the
number of experts who complete the questionnaire, selecting an appropriate sample size is an
important element. Although, it is generally agreed that EFA works better with larger sample sizes -
normally between 5 to 10 observations for each items of questionnaire (Haszard et al., 2013; Yong
and Pearce, 2013)-, when certain conditions exist, such as highly reliable data, high communalities
(Jung, 2013; Schreiber et al., 2012) and some high loading scores (> 0.8) (Yong and Pearce, 2013) then
the small sample size does not play a very important role on EFA results (Schreiber et al., 2012) and
a smaller sample below 50 should be sufficient (Jung, 2013). It was also pointed out in a series of
related articles (see e.g. Jung, 2013; Schreiber et al., 2012; Yong and Pearce, 2013). Our research is a

9
typical example of these conditions since communalities are extremely high (above 0.7 in most of the
indicators- see Appendix A) and the loading in some cases is very high (> 0.8 - see Appendix B),
indicating that the analysis can produce valid and robust results with a small sample size below 50.
Therefore, the number of 44 experts was selected in two main groups including HSE experts of Tehran
municipalities (with at least seven years of working experience in various aspects of HSE) and
academic experts (with at least Ph.D. degree). All the experts involved in this stage were Iranian and
they were different and independent from the experts that participated in the previous study
conducted by Mapar et al. (2017). The questionnaire was sent to experts by email and they were
asked to assign the importance of each indicator according to the 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1
(no significant) to 7 (very significant).
2.3 Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)
Before applying EFA, the internal Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) and Bartlett’s tests and the extraction of
communalities were applied to perform the initial analysis of reliability. Accepting values of KMO>0.5
show that the sampling size is adequate (Habidin et al., 2015; Hou et al., 2014) and small values of
Bartlett's test sphericity (P < 0.05) show that the data set is well fit for the application of EFA. Also,

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any item with a communality of less than 0.40 means that the given item does not relate to other
items and should be eliminated (Costello and Osborne, 2005). In addition, the eigenvalues and the
cumulative amount of score variance were used to identify the optimal number of factors (Schreiber

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et al., 2012). All factors with eigenvalues greater than 1 were considered acceptable (Jamil et al.,
2015). Moreover, a small percentage of cumulative variance (< 50%) shows variables do not fit well
with the factor solution and should be removed from the analysis (Habidin et al., 2015).
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After initial analysis, for extracted the latent factors, Principle Component Analysis (PCA) with
varimax rotation was conducted using SPSS 22. In the present study, a loading of 0.5 or higher (Seo
et al., 2015) was determined to accept the validity of each indicator. Finally, the factors were
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extracted and labelled by an appropriate name based on ‘the content and nature of the indicators’
in each factor (Zarrabi and Fallahi, 2014) as well as ‘the highest loading of indicators’ within each
factor (Jamil et al., 2015) (see also Appendix B for the values of loadings).
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Since the factors have been extracted based on 6 HSE themes, this study followed a hierarchical
structure known as “second-order structure” (Fig. 3). It is a construct involving more than one
dimension (Wetzels et al., 2009). The extracted factors from PCA are known as the first-order
construct- with the loadings of their indicators-, whereas the themes are known as the second-order
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construct -with the loading of their factors- (Goldberg, 2006; Ogasawara, 2002). Accordingly, “the
second-order factor analysis” was applied using Partial Least Squares (PLS) method to determine the
“factor” loadings by relating indicators to the block of the underlying first-order latent construct. The
software Smart PLS 3 was applied for analysing.
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2.4 Developing a composite Sustainability Assessment Index (SAI) for HSE performance
This step aggregates the values of each HSE sustainability themes with individual indicators to form
a composite Sustainability Assessment Index (SAI). To formulate the index, a number of 6 sub-indices
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(Fig. 3) were defined based on each HSE sustainability theme, namely as “Sustainability Assessment
Sub-Index” of each theme, (SASI-Tn), which consist of the normalized weights of factors and the score
of the evaluation of each factor, explained in the next section.

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Noted: fHn= Factors of Health Theme, fSn= Factors of Safety Theme, fEn= Factors of Environmental Theme, fHEn= Factors of

Composite Sustainability Assessment Index (SAI)

Second-order SASI (TH) SASI (TS) SASI (TE) SASI (THE) SASI (THS) SASI
construct (THSE)

fH1 fS1 fE1 fHE1 fHS1 fHSE1

First-order fH2 fS2 fE2 fHE2 fHS2 fHSE2
construct … … … … … …
fHp fSp fEp fHEp fHSp fHSEp

Health-Environmental Theme, fHSn= Factors of Health-Safety Theme, fHSEn= Factors of Integrated Health, Safety and
Environmental Theme.
Fig. 3. The scheme of the Composite Sustainability Assessment Index (SAI).

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2.4.1 Normalization of indicators' value
Since indicators' value have different measurements, it is essential to transform the values to some
standard form. According to Panda et al. (2016), for each indicator, a 5-stage scoring system (Xi) was

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applied based on its proposed measurement unit (see also Appendix C) where the minimum value is
allocated to 0 (This indicator has not been implemented yet on the target municipality) and the
maximum value to 4 (There are integrated activities and procedures for this indicator in the target
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municipality). In addition, as in EFA indicators are correlated with each other, each indicator can
indicate the increase or decrease of other indicators in the relevant factor. Therefore, the value of
each factor was calculated by selected one indicator as a “target indicator” based on the maximum
loadings in its relevant factor. For emphasizing that the target indicators follow three dimensions of
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sustainable development, according to Tanguay et al. (2010) ’s study, the final HSE set were
categorized into different dimensions of sustainable development, according to their covered
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𝑊𝑖
Wi-whole =
∑𝑘
𝑖=1 𝑊𝑖

thematic scope including social, economic, environment, livable (Socio-Environment), equitable

(Socio-Economic), viable (Environmental-Economic); and sustainable (Social-Environment-Economic)
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(Appendix C), by considering their measurement units.

2.4.2 Normalized weights of factors and themes
The normalization aims to unify the units of measure of factors (Dialga, 2018). To normalize the
weight of each factor in each theme (Wi), a simple equation was applied partially based on the
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technique of Krajnc and Glavic (2005) which involves dividing the loading of each factor (Li) by
summation value of all the factor loadings based on each theme (Eq. 1), where m is the number of
factors in each theme (i= 1, 2…, m)
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𝐿𝑖
Wi=
∑𝑚
𝑖=1 𝐿𝑖
(Eq. 1)

In the same way, the normalized weights of factors on a whole scale (Wi-whole) were also calculated
based on Eq. 2, Where k is the number of total factors in the whole scale (i=1, 2 …, k).
Then, the normalized weight of each of them (Wj) was obtained by the sum of the normalized weights
of factors on a whole scale (Wi-whole) which reflects the importance given to each theme (Eq. 3),
Where, j is the number of themes (j=1, 2, … , 6):
𝑚

𝑊𝑗 = ∑ 𝑊 𝑖_𝑤ℎ𝑜𝑙𝑒 (Eq. 2)
(Eq. 3)
𝑖=1

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Although different methods of normalizing and weighting could be applied e.g. by involving expert
judgment or by giving equal weights to all individual themes (Ciommi et al., 2017; Dialga, 2018), the
main motivation to adopt this simple but most transparent method of weighting and normalizing (Eq.
2 and Eq. 3) is the desire to provide the ability of considering and calculating the state of each theme
independently, regardless of its relationship with the entire structure, where required. Moreover,
this method has the advantages of simplicity and avoiding the criticism related to the complexity
(Dialga, 2018).
2.4.3 Linear aggregation of factors to obtain sub-indices and composite index (SAI)
For developing the index, we applied one of the most popular techniques known as “Linear
aggregation” (Gasparatos, 2010). Although a plurality of aggregation methods could be applied, e.g.
geometric or non-compensatory aggregating (Dialga, 2018), the selected method must cover the
objectives of the study and the intentions of users (Nardo et al., 2005). Linear aggregation is useful
when all sub-indicators have the same measurement unit and further ambiguities due to the scale
effects have been neutralized, while geometric aggregations are appropriate when non-comparable
and strictly positive sub-indicators are expressed in different ratio-scales (Nardo et al., 2005). On the

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other hand, a non-compensatory aggregation based on Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) has
some advantages in the sustainability assessment study such as the ability to reflect the relative
importance of each indicator instead of a trade-off ratio and no restrictions on applying qualitative

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or quantitative variables. However, one of the drawbacks of this method is computational limitations
associated with the increasing number of variables (Gan et al., 2017). Regarding the mentioned pros
and cons, since in the present study, the number of variables is high and also the same measurement
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scale was provided by applying a 5-stage scoring system, the linear aggregation was selected as an
appropriate method. Accordingly, the sustainability Assessment Sub-Index (SASI) of each theme (Tn)
can be obtained using Eq. 4, Where n is the sign of each theme (H, S, E, HE, HS, HSE), and Xi represents
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the value of each factor.

𝑆𝐴𝑆𝐼 (𝑇𝑛) = ∑𝑚 𝑖=1 𝑤𝑖  𝑥𝑖 (Eq. 4)

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Then the score of Sustainability Assessment Index (SAI) was obtained by multiplying the
score of each Sub-Index (SASI –Tn) by the weight of each theme (Wj), and then adding up all the
weighted sub-indices (Eq. 5).
𝑛

𝑆𝐴𝐼 = ∑ 𝑤𝑗 × 𝑆𝐴𝑆𝐼 (𝑇𝑛)

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𝑗=1
It is noticeable that there are (Eq. 5) two widely discussed sustainability perspectives when
considering the weighting and aggregation methods including: “week sustainability”
vs. “strong sustainability (Gan et al., 2017; Wilson and Wu, 2017). Week sustainability would arise
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from selecting equal or arbitrary weighting for different issues of sustainability (Huang et al., 2015)
and allowing substitution between different dimensions of sustainability. Strong sustainability allows
for substitutability to a certain degree (Wilson and Wu, 2017), as some types of capital (e.g. social
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and environmental capital) are critical and cannot be substituted by other capitals (Gan et al., 2017).
This study attempted to consider the strong sustainability perspective by applying a rigorous
weighting approach for both factors (wi) and sub-indices (wj) to reduce the substitutability between
different themes. Moreover, indices representing strong sustainability must take into account a
threshold value for each component, above which substitutability cannot be allowed (Gan et al.,
2017). Therefore, according to Wilson and Wu (2017) study, a threshold was provided for each of
sub-indices SASI (Tn) by considering the minimum acceptable score of each target indicator (here
is 1 based on the 5-stage scoring system). It means if any sub-indices have reached the score below
the threshold, the total score of SAI should be reduced to the critical sustainable threshold.

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2.5 Assessing the level of HSE sustainability performance in Tehran municipalities
To evaluate the practical applications, the SAI and SASI (Tn) were applied to assess the HSE
sustainable performance of 22 districts municipalities of Tehran via the cooperation of a group of
assessors consisting: i) HSE manager of the district, ii) number of 2 HSE academic experts of the
district, and iii) a researcher. For coding districts, a code consisting of alphabets was employed based
on geographical setting (A, B, C, and D), and the number of each municipality in that geographical
setting (from 1 to 22). The tools were applied to assess the score of each indicator including reviewing
available data and documents in each district (e.g the results of the annual reports, the disclosed data
and statistics on the official website of municipality, the results of internal and external audits and
related relevant reports, the annual accidents reports, and the available internal statistics used by
different departments)as well as interviewing the related experts. Also, the field observations were
used to ensure the validity of the obtained data where necessary. Finally, the HSE sustainability
performance in municipalities based on SAI was divided into 4 levels according to the maximum
achievable score of SAI, as shown in Table 2.
Table 2

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The level of HSE sustainability performance of municipality based on SAI.
The percentage of
Level Description of HSE sustainability performance
Achieved Score

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1 SAI < 75% Excellent
2 50% ≤ SAI≥ 75% Good
3 25% < SAI≥ 50% Moderate
4

3. Results
SAI ≥ 25% -p
Poor
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In total, 44 effective responses were received. Among those participating in the survey, 54.5% were
HSE experts of Tehran municipalities, whereas 44.5% were academic experts. In addition, the
majority of them (63.6%) were PhD holders and 36.4% master degree holders. Moreover, the
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majority of the respondents (59.1%) had at least 7 years of working experience in HSE sustainability
fields. As shown in Table 3, the obtained value of KMO tests and the result of Bartlett’s test was
acceptable. So, the data were found to be generally suitable to conduct EFA.
Table 3
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Initial reliability of the survey based on the sustainability themes.

Removed Removed indicators Final
Initial
indicators (Based on Factor Loading) number of
Sustainability theme number of KMO test Sig
(Based on indicators
indicators
Communalities)
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Health (H) 7 K14 - 6 .651 0.000

Safety (S) 20 L2/ L3 K7/K13/L11/L13 14 .666 0.000
Environment (E) 18 G3/I4 A2/C7 14 .567 0.000
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Health-Environment
8 D10 - 7 .681 0.000
(HE)
Health-Safety (HS) 3 - K4 2 .538 0.019
Health/ Safety/
24 J14 I13/J7/J11/J12 19 .580 0.000
Environment (HSE)
Sum 80 7 11 62 - -
As shown in table 3, 7 indicators did not gain the acceptance rate of communalities (>0.4) and were
removed from the study (See also Appendix A). In addition, 11 indicators did not reach the loading >
0.5 and were removed from the study. Therefore, 62 indicators were remained and extracted into 20
factors based on 6 HSE themes, as shown in Table 4. The final results of factor loadings, the

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eigenvalues, the cumulative percentage of variance and the assigned label of each factor are shown
in Table 4 (The details of the calculation are presented in Appendix B). Also, Table 5 shows the results
of the normalized weight of each factor and each theme.
Table 4
The extracted factors of each theme based on EFA.
Cumulative %
Theme Code Factor label Eigenvalues Factor loading (Li)
of variance
Health H Public health 2.266 32.368 .943
Active lifestyle 2.213 63.978 .513
Safety S Safe transport 3.093 22.093 .928
Mortality rate in disasters and accidents 2.100 37.090 .501
Safety in public places 2.009 51.441 .820
Fire safety 1.781 64.164 .696
Emergency preparedness 1.372 73.962 .498
Environment E Green jobs 2.746 21.121 .835
Public transport coverage 2.259 38.501 .585
Recycling 1.925 53.308 .742

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Waste management 1.878 67.750 .499
Energy conservation 1.387 78.417 .615
Health- HE Traffic pollution control 2.913 36.411 .964

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Environment Green space 2.140 63.156 .481
Health-Safety HS Occupational health and safety 1.390 69.508 1
HSE HSE Education and awareness of citizens 3.648 19.199 .789
Administrations of municipal HSE 3.128 35.661 .686
Contractors HSE management
HSE rules and procedures
HSE sustainability plans and projects
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2.435
2.128
2.180
48.478
71.150
59.952
.522
.503
.835
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Table 5
The normalized weights of factors and themes.
Normalized Normalized weight Normalized
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Factor Loading
Theme Factor weight of factor of factor on a whole weight of theme
(Li)
(Wi) scale (Wi-Whole) (Wj)
H Public health .943 0.65 0.07
0.11
Active lifestyle .513 0.35 0.04
S Safe transport .928 0.27 0.07
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Mortality rate in disasters and accidents .501 0.15 0.03

Safety in public places .820 0.24 0.06 0.25
Fire safety .696 0.20 0.05
Emergency preparedness .498 0.14 0.04
E Green jobs .835 0.25 0.06
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Public transport coverage .585 0.18 0.04

Recycling .742 0.23 0.05 0.23
Waste management .499 0.15 0.04
Energy conservation .615 0.19 0.04
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HE Traffic pollution control .964 0.67 0.07

0.10
Green space .481 0.33 0.03
HS Occupational health and safety 1 1 0.07 0.07
HSE Education and awareness of citizens .789 0.24 0.06
Administrations of municipal HSE .686 0.21 0.05
Contractors HSE management .522 0.16 0.04 0.24
HSE rules and procedures .503 0.15 0.03
HSE sustainability plans and projects .835 0.24 0.06
Since the inputs used to calculate SAI are both weights and scores, based on the 5-stage scoring
system (see Appendix C) as well as the weights of each factor (Wi) and each theme (Wj), the maximum

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achievable score of SAI was obtained as 400 (Table 6). (The details of the calculations are also shown
in Appendix D).
Table 6
The maximum achievable score based on SAI.
Maximum Maximum
Normalized weight
SASI (Tn) Number of factors achievable score achievable score
of theme (Wj)
based on SASI based on SAI
SASI (TH) 2 400 0.11 44
SASI (TS) 5 400 0.25 100
SASI (TE) 5 400 0.23 92
SASI (THE) 2 400 0.10 40
SASI (THS) 1 400 0.07 28
SASI (THSE) 5 400 0.24 96
Total 20 - 1 400

Not to mention, despite quantitative differences between the number of factors in each theme
(Table 6), by applying the ‘normalized weights’ (Eq.1), the summation of the weights (Wi) in each

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theme was rescaled to 1. Therefore, in spite of the different number of factors, the 'maximum
achievable score for each SASI reached the same quantitative value (400). It could also provide the
ability of comparison between different themes of HSE through applying the same quantitative scale

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(table 7), as well as facilitate the interpretation of data and reduce the calculation time and cost.
Finally, the level of HSE sustainability performance is divided into 4 levels based on the maximum
achievable score of SAI (400), as shown in Table 7. According to the perspective of strong
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sustainability, the threshold of each proposed sub-indices was determined to equal to 100. It means
the overall score of SAI could never exceed 100 unless all the SASI (Tn) ≥ 100.

Table 7
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The level of HSE sustainability performance of municipality based on SAI.
Level SAI Classification Description of HSE sustainability performance
1 300 < SAI≥ 400 Excellent
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2 200 < SAI≥ 300 Good

3 100 < SAI≥ 200 Moderate
4 SAI ≥ 100 Poor
Finally, The results of assessing SAI and SASI (Tn) for 22 district municipalities of Tehran case study
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are shown in Table 8 (The details of the calculations are also shown in Appendix E, Tables E.1 to E.6).
Based on the scores of SAI, the municipality with code B-6 scored the highest (246) and was placed
in the second level based on SAI. The least score, 92, belonged to the municipality with code D-2 and
placed in the fourth level of SAI. By considering the scores of SASI (Tn), the highest sustainability
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performance in Tehran municipality is in the HE theme (the total score: 229), whereas the lowest
score was obtained by HSE Theme (the total score: 175). Overall, the municipalities with codes D-2
and D-3 obtained the minimum scores in most SASI (Tn), and subsequently the minimum scores in
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SAI (table 8). Also, the results show that when the municipality performance was not successful in
one theme, it could affect the scores of other themes. These trends could be also confirmed by the
scores of the SASI (Tn) in the municipality with code B-6 that shows when the municipality was
successful in the overall score of SAI, it subsequently obtained the top scores in the most of the SASI
(Tn). These results can demonstrate that all the themes are integrated and each theme should be
considered as a part of a whole.
Table 8
The total score of HSE sustainability performance of Tehran municipalities based on SAI.

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Municipality Scores of SASI (Tn)
code SASI Score of SAI Level
SASI (TH) SASI (TS) SASI (TE) SASI (THE) SASI (THS)
(THSE)
A-1 235 176 238 333 300 260 241 2
A-2 200 186 165 300 200 176 192 3
A-3 265 233 213 267 200 145 211 2
A-4 135 173 165 200 100 145 158 3
A-5 235 176 173 266 200 155 187 3
B-1 235 237 223 233 300 176 223 2
B-2 200 180 183 300 200 184 197 3
B-3 230 206 165 267 100 176 190 3
B-4 200 200 156 200 200 184 186 3
B-5 235 180 183 300 200 176 199 3
B-6 235 222 238 267 300 260 246 2
C-1 170 161 173 133 200 169 167 3
C-2 170 134 135 166 100 200 155 3
C-3 200 200 173 200 200 184 190 3
C-4 235 186 176 100 300 236 210 2
C-5 200 196 194 267 200 184 193 3
D-1 235 176 183 300 200 145 190 3
D-2 100 85 93 166 100 63 92 4

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D-3 100 85 93 200 100 79 100 4
D-4 200 176 198 200 200 205 195 3
D-5 265 169 178 133 200 184 183 3
D-6 200 176 190 233 200 155 184 3
Average

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204 178 177 229 195 175 186 3
Score

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4. Comparative analysis and discussion
In this section, a comparative analysis and discussion was presented in three distinct parts: i) in
section 4.1, we only analysed the comparative statistical results of developing the SAI and
compared the importance of each factor and theme; ii) in section 4.2, a comparative analysis was
presented between the results of applying SAI on the case study and compared the importance of
each theme gained by each district of Tehran municipality, and iii) in section 4.3 a discussion about
areas of potential improvement in the field of municipal HSE sustainability were presented and
analysed.
4.1 Comparative analysis of developing the composite index
As regards the proposed composite index (SAI) and the obtained weights of each theme, the safety
theme ranked the first in terms of importance (Fig. 4). The results obtained from other previous
studies (Cunningham et al., 2010; Lozano and Huisingh, 2011; Zoeteman et al., 2016) showed that
environmental issues gained the greatest attention. However, as shown in the present study, the
integrated HSE theme, as well as the safety theme could gain almost the same importance at the
municipal level as compared with the environmental one.

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Subsequently, HSE and environmental themes were closely followed by the safety theme, ranked
second and third respectively, with a little difference in their scores. A possible parallel analysis that
emerges includes the effect and influence of safety issues (e.g. safety behavior) on sustainability. As

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also evidenced by Cunningham et al (2010), goal-setting and commitment are two highlighted
strategies for promoting environmental issues that clearly carry over into safety issues, and could
also promote the sustainability level. The author also stressed that if certain behaviors have been
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predominately targeted (e.g. just environmental issues), the other domain such as safety might be
neglected. Therefore, our study was successful to highlight the importance of safety issues in line
with sustainability in megacities and avoid to be neglected by other sustainability matters.
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The results can be also compared with the results of the previous study conducted by Mapar et al.
(Mapar et al., 2017), who applied the Delphi method and used frequency for calculating the weights.
Although in the present study, the normal factor loadings were applied instead of frequency, both
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studies were almost similar in their results where the safety and HSE themes obtained the top ranks.
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Fig. 4. The Comparative results of the importance of HSE sustainability themes based on their
weights in the SAI.
Another holistic view of the themes and their relevant factors in the proposed index is to look at the
interactions among themes. The results of this section showed a stronger relationship between
sustainability aspects in the field of health and environment (HE-10%) as compared with health and
safety (HS-7%) aspects. A good example of this integrative mechanism between health and
environmental issues in other megacities is seen in Brazilian cities, where 6 bags of trash are
exchanged with 1 bag of grocery, instead of cash which fosters health and well-being within the
society (Panda et al., 2016).

17
The results could be also compared with Environmental Performance Index (EPI) that has been based
upon two integrated policy objectives including i) reducing environmental stresses on human health,
and ii) promoting ecosystem vitality (Böhringer and Jochem, 2007) that illustrated the close link
between health and environment and the necessity to consider both matters in an integrated
context.
Another point that must be considered is that although the HS theme is located in the lowest rank, it
reached a grade of importance (7%) and show that there are positive interactions between health
and safety issues while developing a sustainability index. This result is partially in line with other
sustainability indices developed for megacities such as “the India composite urban sustainability
index” (Panda et al., 2016), which integrated both health and safety themes in the social category,
and the authors stressed that there are strong inter-linkages between the themes under the social
dimension.
4.2 Comparative analysis of case study result
According to Fig. 5, by considering the sub-indices SASI (Tn), the best sustainability performance in
Tehran municipality is in HE theme (overall score: 229) consisting of two factors: ‘Traffic pollution

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control’ and ‘green spaces’. These results are in line with those of Zhao and Li (2017) who showed a
balance between local health and environmental sustainability and stated that urban development
might cause health problems for local residents due to factors such as less green space for outdoor

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activities, and high exposure to traffic and air pollution.

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Fig. 5. Average scores of SASI (Tn) in Tehran municipalities.

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Regarding Fig. 6, the majority of Tehran municipalities (68%) were ranked ‘third’ based on their HSE
sustainability performance on SAI. Therefore, it can be concluded that HSE sustainability
performance in Tehran municipalities is ‘moderate’ and under developing, but the overall status of
HSE sustainability performance is still far from the measures considered in the present study (see
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also Fig 5).

Fig. 6. The percentage of the level attained for SAI in the municipality of 22 districts of Tehran.
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In addition, 23% of Tehran municipalities were obtained the second level of HSE sustainability
performance. Since it is less than 10 years that the municipal HSE issues, especially interlinking
themes, have entered into the Tehran municipality’s activities, it is regarded as a new subject and

18
considered to be at its infancy level. Therefore, the obtained percentages (23%) showed significant
improvement in this short period of implementation. The results also showed that 9% of Tehran
municipalities ranked fourth and their performances were not in line with HSE sustainability. The
decrease in the scores of the fourth-ranked municipalities based on HSE sustainability performance
as compared with other municipalities can be attributed to the low scores in factors of green jobs,
administrations of municipal HSE, education, awareness of citizens, and fire safety.
Finally, because 68% of the studied municipalities in Tehran were ranked third, it can be concluded
that in general, Tehran municipality ranked third; it requires to overview their programs to develop
HSE sustainability performance. Note that the maximum attained SAI score in this study (246) (Table
8) showed that although a lot of efforts were made in Tehran municipalities for improving HSE
sustainability status, none of them were ranked first in SAI. Therefore, it is necessary to overview
plans and programs related to municipal sustainable development as a district-cantered topic with a
focus on HSE issues.
4.3 Discussion about potential areas of improvement in the field of municipal HSE sustainability
By comparison between the ‘importance’ and the ‘obtained score’ of HSE theme, it is obvious that

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although “HSE theme” gained the second importance level among other themes in the Index (Fig. 4),
its score of performance in Tehran municipality stood on the lowest level (Fig. 5). Also, most of the
proposed factors in the HSE theme are relevant to managerial and organizational contexts, such as

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HSE plans, policies, rules, procedures, and administration affairs (see also Appendix C). This
comparison demonstrates that to improve the managerial performance of municipalities, there is a
need to focus more on the strategies, plans and programs that cover all three health, safety and
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environmental aspects of sustainability simultaneously. However, as pointed out by Panda et al.
(2016) it is rare to find a city having an equal score on all the sub-indices.
Another point behind developing the proposed composite index is that there is a need to have a
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holistic look at all the proposed sub-indices (themes) as a combination of parts and the policy
interventions are required to make a balance between the proposed themes. For instance, expanding
the areas of public parks may be good but if there is no regulation in municipalities to consider safety
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arrangement while developing the parks, then the city may subsequently obtain less score on the
safety theme, probably because of occurring accidents due to the unsafe situations in the developed
parks, during construction and operation phases.
Regarding the final factors, another potential area of improvement could emerge on the wellbeing
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issue and its interaction with ecosystem services. According to the third goal of Sustainable
Development Goals 2030 (United Nations, 2015), there are some factors in the final set that covered
the components of wellbeing transparently including public health, active lifestyle, traffic pollution
control, and green space (Appendix C). For instance, the ‘green space’ factor could be considered an
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ecosystem service provider (Chen et al., 2019), which might affect human happiness, among other
related aspects. Therefore, by allocating this factor to HE theme (instead of just the environmental
theme) the interaction of ecosystem services on human wellbeing has been addressed. Moreover,
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the ‘active lifestyle’ factor could promote the citizens' quality of life and subsequently their life
satisfaction which is known as one of the subjective components of wellbeing. Therefore, this study
highlighted the interaction of ecosystem services on human health and wellbeing as a potential area
of improvement in municipal sustainability domain.

The present study could also reduce the concerns pointed out in previous studies (Cunningham et
al., 2010; Visvaldis et al., 2013) that emphasized the gap of considering health and safety issues as
independent and key factors in sustainability studies. In the present study, among the 20 identified
factors, 5 factors (25%) (Consist of safe transportation, safety in public places, fire safety, emergency
preparedness, and mortality rate in disasters and accidents) also 2 factors (10%) (Consist of public

19
health and active lifestyle) were directly and independently related to safety and health issues,
respectively. Therefore, health and safety factors could be considered as independent and key factors
to highlight the role of these issues in building up sustainability in municipalities.
In addition, this study also transparent the role of the economic dimension in promoting the
performance of sustainability in municipalities. Regarding Appendix C, there are some target
indicators and measurement units that belong to interlinking economic dimension (Tanguay et al.,
2010) including ‘equitable’ (e.g. % municipality’s budget spending on community care issues, % of
reduction of occupational accidents or illness; and % of reduction on fire or municipal fleet fatalities),
viable (e.g. % of the solid waste that is recycled, % of solid waste that sorted at source and annual
reduction of fuel consumption in municipal operation) and sustainable (e.g. municipalities’ budget
on HSE issues). It showed that although health and safety are central issues in the social dimension,
this research supported the role of economic dimension on HSE sustainability assessment and
addressed this critical issue in the final set.
The last point is that regarding the strong sustainability approach and the threshold of SASI (Tn)=100,
the municipalities D2 and D3 obtained the lowest scores in environmental (both scores are 93), safety

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(both scores are 85) and HSE themes (63 and 79 respectively) (see also Table 8). However, the overall
scores of SAI for these mentioned municipalities were achieved 92 and 100 respectively, and it was
not necessary that we reduce their final scores to the threshold, as both municipalities already gained

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the lowest level (poor sustainability performance). It is noticeable that in municipalities A4, B3, C2
and D4, the scores of some of the SASI (Tn) amounted exactly to the threshold (100) (see also table
8). Therefore, in the present study, we decided to keep them on their obtained levels as they gained
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the minimum requirement. However, for future studies, it is recommended to look towards
internationally accepted norms upon standards (Wilson and Wu, 2017), such as the Sustainable
Development Goals 2030, including their targets, to determine the minimum acceptable threshold
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more accurately.
5. Conclusions
Local public administrations such as municipalities have particularly been recognized as
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‘sustainability leaders in collaboration with other public authorities. The rapid development of
megacities without considering their alignment with sustainable development goals can also affect
the level of health and safety of citizens, as well as irrecoverable damages to megacities environment.
The present study was conducted to facilitate the assessment process of HSE sustainability
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performance of municipalities, through developing a quantitative index (SAI), considering the

intersection aspects of HSE. It involved 6 sub-indices (SASI-Tn), 20 main factors and 4 levels of HSE
sustainability performance, which were extracted through EFA. The developed index (SAI) will help
municipalities to i) explore the sustainability level of each municipality HSE performance; ii) provide
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the ability to compare the HSE performance of each municipality with their counterparts using a
quantitative score, and iii) identify the areas for potential improvement in the field of municipal HSE
sustainability.
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The results of the present study showed that ‘safety’ theme, and subsequently with a little difference,
the ‘HSE’ and ‘environmental’ themes are the most important themes in the municipal HSE
sustainability performance. The results of employing SASI sub-indices in the case study showed that
the best performance for HSE sustainability in Tehran municipalities was in the Health-Environment
(HE) theme. Also, according to the score of SAI, Tehran megacities ranked third in their performance
towards HSE sustainability, which indicates that HSE sustainability issues in Tehran megacities are
under developing with a significant gap from the desirable level.
In this study, for developing the formula of SAI, it was attempted to apply simple algebra operations
including linear aggregation. Therefore, future efforts could simply focus on adding new sub-indices
considering the special conditions of their pilot study to develop a more comprehensive and macro
20
index, without significant changes to the structure of the proposed index. Moreover, although the
sensitivity analysis was not considered as the main objective of this study, evaluating the sensitivity
of results can add more value to the proposed index. Therefore, it is recommended that in future
studies, the sensitivity analysis be considered by adopting other possible methods of weighting and
aggregating such as equal weighting for each theme and non-compensatory aggregation and the
results be compared with the results of the present study.
Although multi-scale perspective for urban sustainability was not the main aim of this study, it is
suggested that the implication of a multi-scale sustainability perspective, including both local and
regional scales, be explored by future research initiatives while assessing urban sustainability. It is
also recommended that SAI be assessed in municipalities of other megacities and the reasons for the
differences among the final achievable scores with other counterparts be compared with the results
of the present study. Moreover, since Tehran municipality has an independent department named
"HSE management system", the performance of the afore-mentioned department could have a direct
or indirect effect on the achievable score of SAI and its obtained level. Hence, for future studies, it is
suggested that the level of SAI be assessed in the other municipalities who do not have a unified

of
department of HSE in their structures and then be investigated the effect of having HSE structure on
the final achievable score of SAI.

ro
Declaration of interests
-p
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal
relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
re
Acknowledgments
lP

This project was supported by Tehran Urban Research and Planning Centre [137.958879] and the Islamic Azad
University’s Department of Environmental Management, Science and Research Branch, as a co-benefit project.
We would also like to thank the Center for Environmental and Sustainability Research (CENSE), School of
na

Science and Technology, NOVA University Lisbon, for sharing their pearls of wisdom with us during the course
of this research. CENSE is financed through Strategic Project Pest-OE/AMB/UI4085/2013 from Fundação para
a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal.
ur

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Appendices

Appendix A

Communalities of indicators based on theme

H S E HSE

A4 .684 H14 .603 A2 .599 I1 .819

D6 .684 H15 .657 A3 .789 I3 .807

K14 .316 H16 .760 A5 .701 I5 .686

M2 .577 H17 .799 C3 .627 I7 .743

M3 .653 K2 .678 C5 .765 I10 .804

M4 .744 K3 .527 C7 .739 I11 .787

of
M5 .821 K7 .721 D1 .786 I12 .735

K9 .711 D4 .758 I13 .863

ro
K13 .508 D5 .734 J1 .740

L1 .711 D9 .625 J2 .723

L2

L3
.328

.397
D7

G3
.675

.344
J3

J6
.686

.765
-p
L5 .844 G5 .743 J7 .707
re
L6 .807 G7 .871 J9 .740

L8 .619 H1 .930 J11 .717

lP

L9 .647 H2 .886 J12 .684

L11 .747 I4 .345 J13 .875

L12 .683 J14 .392

na

L13 .656 K4 .609

L14 .545 K6 .661

K11 .601
ur

K12 .734

K15 .711
Jo

K17 .804

K18 .758

M9 .537

M10 .779

B3 .765

B4 .693

D10 .171

26
 E1 .747

F1 .679

F2 .714

F8 .569

H5 .714

Appendix B

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) results based on Health theme

Sustainability Theme: Health (H)

of
Cumulative % of Rotated
Factors Label Eigenvalues % of variance indicators
variance factor loading

A4 .791

ro
1 Public health 2.266 32.368 32.368 M5 .869

D6 .826

2 Active life 2.213 31.610

-p 63.978
M2

M3
.747

.807
re
M4 .817

Sustainability Theme: Safety (S)- Emergency response

Cumulative % of Rotated
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Factors Label Eigenvalues % of variance indicators

variance factor loading

H14 .865

H15 .814
3 Safe transport 3.093 22.093 22.093
na

H16 . 708

H17 .601

L1 .789
ur

4 Mortality rate 2.100 14.997 37.090

L9 .771

K2 .617
Jo

Safe public
5 2.009 14.351 51.441 K3 .803
places
K9 .769

L5 .872

6 Fire safety 1.781 12.723 64.164 L6 .743

L8 .823

Emergency L12 .787

7 1.372 9.799 73.962
preparedness L14 .594

27
Sustainability Theme: Environment (E)- Environmental pollutions

Cumulative % of Rotated
Factors Label Eigenvalues % of variance indicators
variance factor loading

A3 -.733

D7 .806
8 Green jobs 2.746 21.121 21.121
G5 .739

G7 .868

Public H1 .950
9 transport 2.259 17.380 38.501
capacity H2 .914

A5 .759

10 Recycling 1.925 14.806 53.308 D5 .641

of
D9 .800

D1 .880

ro
Waste
11 1.878 14.442 67.750 D4 .695
management
D2 .641

12
Energy
conservation
1.387 10.667
-p 78.417
C3

C5
.865

.695

Sustainability Theme: Health- Environment (HE)

re
Cumulative % of Rotated
Factors Label Eigenvalues % of variance indicators
variance factor loading
lP

B3 .851
Traffic B4 .825
13 pollution 2.913 36.411 36.411
control E1 .852
na

H5 .815

F1 .822

14 Green space 2.140 26.745 63.156 F2 .839

ur

F8 .686

Sustainability Theme: Health- Safety-Environment (HSE)

Jo

Cumulative % of Rotated
Factors Label Eigenvalues % of variance indicators
variance factor loading

J1 .805

J2 .827
Risk
16 Management 3.648 19.199 19.199 J3 .791
and education
J6 .682

K11 .670

28
 K12 .718

I10 .855

I11 .718
Municipal HSE
17 3.128 16.462 35.661 I12 .615
administration
M9 .620

M10 .761

I13 .727
Initiatives and
18 2.435 12.817 48.478 J11 .735
participation
K15 .831

J9 .632
Contractors
19 HSE 2.128 11.198 71.150 K17 .821

of
management
K18 .836

HSE plans and I1 .892

ro
20 2.180 11.474 59.952
Programs I3 .912

Appendix C
-p
re
Scoring system for assessing SAI based on target indicators.
Scoring system (Xi)
Target Sustainability
Theme Factor Measure
lP

indicator dimension
1 2 3 4

H Public health Public access % of population Social ≥ 25% 25%<x≤50% 50%<x≤75% < 75%
to health benefiting from
services municipality’s
health centers
na

Active lifestyle Community % Municipality’s Equitable ≥ 5% 5%<x≤10% 10%<x≤15% < 15%

care budget spending on
community care
issues, as a share of
ur

total budget

S Safe transport Mortality rate % of reduction on Equitable ≥ 5% 5%<x≤10% 10%<x≤20% < 20%
in public municipal fleet
transport fatalities per
Jo

100,000 population

Mortality rate in Mortality rate % of reduction on Equitable ≥ 5% 5%<x≤10% 10%<x≤20% < 20%
disasters and of fire number of fire
accidents fatalities per
100,000 population

Safety in public Safe cultural % of cultural and Social ≥ 25% 25%<x≤50% 50%<x≤75% < 75%
places and religious religious sites (e.g.
sites cinema, masque,
etc.) undergoing
safety
plans/projects

29
 Scoring system (Xi)
Target Sustainability
Theme Factor Measure
indicator dimension
1 2 3 4

Fire safety Preparedness Annual number of Social ≥ 10 10<x≤25 25<x≤50 < 50

of fire team comprehensive fire
drills conducted per
100 firefighters

Emergency Preparedness Annual number of Social ≥ 10 10<x≤25 25<x≤50 < 50

preparedness of emergency drills for natural
team disasters issues

E Green jobs Green % of Environmental ≥ 25% 25%<x≤50% 50%<x≤75% < 75%

materials in implementation of
municipal municipality
operations plans/projects
about using green
materials in
municipal
constructions

of
Public transport Capacity of Number of public Livable ≥ 10 10<x≤20 20<x≤30 < 30
coverage public transport vehicles
transport (bus) per 100,000

ro
population

Recycling Recycling % of the solid waste Viable ≥ 25% 25%<x≤50% 50%<x≤75% < 75%
that is recycled

Waste
management
Waste sorting
at source
% of solid waste
that sorted at
source
-p
Viable ≥ 25% 25%<x≤50% 50%<x≤75% < 75%

Energy Fuel % Annual reduction Viable ≥ 5% 5%<x≤10% 10%<x≤20% < 20%

re
conservation consumption in of fuel consumption
municipal in municipal
operations operation
lP

HE Traffic pollution Vehicle % of vehicle Livable ≥ 25% 25%<x≤50% 50%<x≤75% < 75%
control technical technical inspection
inspection by authorized
centers

Green space Public parks Area of green Livable ≥5 5<x≤9 9<x≤12 < 12
na

and gardens spaces, public parks

and gardens (m2)
per capita

HS Occupational Occupational % of reduction of Equitable ≥ 5% 5%<x≤10% 10%<x≤20% < 20%

health and health and occupational
ur

safety safety accidents or illness

promotion
programs
Jo

HSE Education and Public HSE % of target group- Livable ≥ 10% 10%<x≤25% 25%<x≤50% < 50%
awareness of education for between the age of
citizens adults 12- 25-under the
public HSE
educational
programs by
municipality (at
least 1 course in a
year), as a share of
total

30
 Scoring system (Xi)
Target Sustainability
Theme Factor Measure
indicator dimension
1 2 3 4

Administrations National Number of Livable ≥1 1<x≤3 3<x≤5 <5

of municipal councils for representative of
HSE HSE national councils for
sustainable HSE sustainable
development development in
each district of
municipality

Contractors HSE Contractors % of contracts Livable ≥ 25% 25%<x≤50% 50%<x≤75% < 75%
management HSE pre- undergoing HSE
qualification pre-qualification, as
a share of total
contracts

HSE rules and HSE Level of Livable ≥ 25% 25%<x≤50% 50%<x≤75% < 75%
procedures management implementation (%)
systems of HSE management

of
systems

HSE Municipalities % of municipality Sustainable ≥ 10% 10%<x≤15% 15%<x≤20% < 20%

sustainability budget on HSE budget on HSE

ro
plans and issues issues, as a share of
projects total budget

Appendix D
-p
re
The details of calculating maximum achievable score based on SAI
Maximum Maximum Maximum Maximum
Normalized
Score of achievable achievable achievable
lP

Theme Factor weight of

factor score for score based score based
factor (Wi)
each factor on SASI on SAI

SASI (TH) Public health 4 0.65 260

400 44
Active lifestyle 4 0.35 140
na

SASI (TS) Safe transport 4 0.27 108

Mortality rate in disasters and accidents 4 0.15 60

Safety in public places 4 0.24 96 400 100

ur

Fire safety 4 0.20 80

Emergency preparedness 4 0.14 56

Jo

SASI (TE) Green jobs 4 0.25 100

Public transport coverage 4 0.18 72

Recycling 4 0.23 92 400 92

Waste management 4 0.15 60

Energy conservation 4 0.19 76

SASI (THE) Traffic pollution control 4 0.67 268

400 40
Green space 4 0.33 132

31
 Maximum Maximum Maximum Maximum
Normalized
Score of achievable achievable achievable
Theme Factor weight of
factor score for score based score based
factor (Wi)
each factor on SASI on SAI

SASI (THS) Occupational health and safety 4 1 400 400 28

SASI (THSE) Education and awareness of citizens 4 0.24 96

Administrations of municipal HSE 4 0.21 84

Contractors HSE management 4 0.16 64 400 96

HSE rules and procedures 4 0.15 60

HSE sustainability plans and projects 4 0.25 96

Total - - - - 400

of
ro
-p
re
lP
na
ur
Jo

32
Appendix E

Table E.1

The average score of health sustainability performance of Tehran municipalities - SASI (TH)
Municipality Factors
code Score of
Public Active SASI (TH)
health lifestyle

A-1 2 3 235

A-2 2 2 200

A-3 3 2 265

A-4 1 2 135

A-5 2 3 235

B-1 2 3 235

of
B-2 2 2 200

B-3 3 1 230

ro
B-4 2 2 200

B-5 2 3 235

B-6 2 3 235

C-1

C-2
1

1
3

3
170

170
-p
re
C-3 2 2 200

C-4 2 3 235

C-5 2 2 200
lP

D-1 2 3 235

D-2 1 1 100

D-3 1 1 100
na

D-4 2 2 200

D-5 3 2 265

D-6 2 2 200
ur

Average Score 204

Jo

33
Table E.2

The average score of safety sustainability performance of Tehran municipalities - SASI (TS)
Municipality Factors
code Score of
Safe Mortality rate in Safety in public SASI (TS)
Fire safety Emergency preparedness
transport disasters and accidents places

A-1 2 2 1 2 2 176

A-2 2 2 2 2 1 186

A-3 3 2 2 3 1 233

A-4 1 2 2 2 2 173

A-5 2 2 1 2 2 176

B-1 3 2 3 2 1 237

of
B-2 2 2 2 1 2 180

B-3 2 2 2 3 1 206

ro
B-4 2 2 2 2 2 200

B-5 2 2 2 1 2 180

B-6 3 1 3 2 1 222

C-1

C-2
2

1
1

1
1

1
-p 2

2
2

2
161

134
re
C-3 2 2 2 2 2 200

C-4 2 2 2 2 1 186

C-5 2 2 1 3 2 196
lP

D-1 2 2 1 2 2 176

D-2 1 0 1 1 1 85

D-3 1 0 1 1 1 85
na

D-4 2 2 1 2 2 176

D-5 2 2 1 3 2 169

D-6 2 2 1 2 2 176
ur

Average Score 178

Jo

34
Table E.3

The average score of environmental sustainability performance of Tehran municipalities - SASI (TE)
Municipality Factors
code Score of
Public transport Waste SASI (TE)
Green jobs Recycling Energy conservation
coverage management

A-1 2 2 3 3 2 238

A-2 1 1 3 1 2 165

A-3 1 2 3 3 2 213

A-4 1 1 3 1 2 165

A-5 0 2 3 2 2 173

B-1 2 2 3 2 2 223

B-2 1 2 3 1 2 183

of
B-3 1 1 3 1 2 165

B-4 1 2 2 2 1 156

ro
B-5 1 2 3 1 2 183

B-6 2 2 3 3 2 238

C-1 0 2 3 2 2 173

C-2

C-3
0

0
2

2
2

3
-p 1

2
2

2
135

173
re
C-4 1 1 3 3 1 176

C-5 1 2 3 3 1 194

D-1 1 2 3 1 2 183
lP

D-2 0 2 1 1 1 93

D-3 0 2 1 1 1 93

D-4 1 2 3 2 2 198
na

D-5 2 1 2 3 1 178

D-6 1 2 2 3 2 190

Average Score 177

ur

Table E.4
Jo

The average score of health-environmental sustainability performance of Tehran municipalities -

SASI (THE)
Municipality Factors
code
Traffic Score of SASI
Green (THE)
pollution
space
control

A-1 3 4 333

A-2 3 3 300

35
Municipality Factors
code
Traffic Score of SASI
Green (THE)
pollution
space
control

A-3 3 2 267

A-4 2 2 200

A-5 2 4 266

B-1 2 3 233

B-2 3 3 300

B-3 3 2 267

B-4 2 2 200

B-5 3 3 300

B-6 3 2 267

of
C-1 1 2 133

C-2 1 3 166

ro
C-3 2 2 200

C-4 1 1 100

C-5 3 2 267

D-1

D-2
3

1
3

3
300

166
-p
re
D-3 2 2 200

D-4 2 2 200

D-5 1 2 133
lP

D-6 2 3 233

Average Score 229

na
ur
Jo

36
Table E.5

The average score of health-safety sustainability performance of Tehran municipalities - SASI (THS)
Factor
Municipality Score of SASI
code Occupational health (THS)
and safety

A-1 3 300

A-2 2 200

A-3 2 200

A-4 1 100

A-5 2 200

B-1 3 300

B-2 2 200

of
B-3 1 100

B-4 2 200

ro
B-5 2 200

B-6 3 300

C-1 2 200

C-2

C-3
1

2
100

200
-p
re
C-4 3 300

C-5 2 200

D-1 2 200
lP

D-2 1 100

D-3 1 100

D-4 2 200
na

D-5 2 200

D-6 2 200

Average Score 195

ur
Jo

Table E.6

The average score of HSE sustainability performance of Tehran municipalities - SASI (THSE)
Municipality Factors
code
Education and Score of
Administrations Contractors HSE HSE rules and HSE sustainability SASI (THSE)
awareness of
of municipal HSE management procedures plans and projects
citizens

A-1 2 3 2 3 3 260

A-2 1 2 2 2 2 176

37
Municipality Factors
code
Education and Score of
Administrations Contractors HSE HSE rules and HSE sustainability SASI (THSE)
awareness of
of municipal HSE management procedures plans and projects
citizens

A-3 2 2 1 1 1 145

A-4 2 2 1 1 1 145

A-5 1 1 2 2 2 155

B-1 1 2 2 2 2 176

B-2 2 2 1 2 2 184

B-3 1 2 2 2 2 176

B-4 2 2 1 2 2 184

B-5 1 2 2 2 2 176

B-6 2 3 2 3 3 260

of
C-1 2 2 1 1 2 169

C-2 2 2 2 2 2 200

ro
C-3 2 2 1 2 2 184

C-4 2 3 2 3 2 236

C-5 2 2 1 2 2 184

D-1

D-2
2

1
2

0
1

0
-p 1

1
1

1
145

63
re
D-3 1 0 1 1 1 79

D-4 2 3 1 2 2 205

D-5 2 2 1 2 2 184
lP

D-6 1 1 2 2 2 155

Average Score 175

na
ur
Jo

38