Synthesizing social and environmental sensing to monitor the impact of large-scale infrastructure development
Synthesizing social and environmental sensing to monitor the impact of large-scale infrastructure development
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DOI：
10.1016/j.envsci.2021.07.020
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发表时间：
2021-10
影响因子：
6
通讯作者：
Yingjie Li;Yuqian Zhang;Leigh Anne Tiffany;Ruishan Chen;Meng Cai;Jianguo Liu
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Yingjie Li;Yuqian Zhang;Leigh Anne Tiffany;Ruishan Chen;Meng Cai;Jianguo Liu
中国“一带一路”倡议推动的大型基础设施项目（LSIP）的蓬勃发展引起了全球对规模，速度和潜在影响的关注。研究主要集中在地缘政治影响（即，政治和国际关系），但对社会和环境影响知之甚少。这在很大程度上是因为大规模一致、高分辨率、跨境的社会和环境数据相当有限。为了解决知识差距，本研究开发了一种新的社会环境传感（SES）方法，通过合成遥感图像和地理标记的Twitter数据来绘制LSIP的社会环境影响。我们使用两个BRI旗舰项目，即肯尼亚的蒙巴萨-内罗毕标准轨道铁路（SGR）和巴基斯坦的中巴经济走廊（CPEC），证明了这种方法的适用性。我们的分析表明，这两个项目都导致了自然土地的大量损失（例如，3.7肯尼亚的植被损失了20%，巴基斯坦的冰川减少了23.3%），但人工土地的收益（例如，4.2肯尼亚的耕地面积增加了10%，巴基斯坦的建筑用地面积扩大了34.6%）。此外，BRI-LSIP在很大程度上改善了当地的经济发展，因为夜间灯光图像显示，BRI-LSIP站点附近的地区比其他地区明亮得多。在社会方面，我们发现公众对这些项目的情绪基本上是积极的，并随着时间的推移而改善，这与批评者对BRI-LSIP的普遍悲观情绪相矛盾。然而，情绪也呈现出强烈的空间异质性-BRI交通枢纽（通常是大城市）周围的地区大多比其他地区表现出更积极的情绪。通过在空间上将地理参考的情绪得分与遥感环境指标相结合，我们进一步发现，积极情绪在较发达地区改善得更多，但在其他地区仅略有变化。这项研究为评估大型项目的社会环境影响提供了一种新方法，研究结果将有助于为未来地球仪项目的实施提供信息。
The booming development of large-scale infrastructure projects (LSIPs) facilitated by China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has drawn global concern regarding the scale, pace, and potential impact. Studies have largely focused on the geopolitical impact (i.e., politics and international relations) but less is known about social and environmental impact. This is in large part because consistent, high-resolution, cross-boundary social and environmental data at large scales are rather limited. To address the knowledge gap, this research developed a novel Socio-Environmental Sensing (SES) approach by synthesizing remote sensing imagery and geotagged Twitter data to map the socio-environmental impact of LSIPs. We demonstrated the applicability of this approach using two BRI flagship projects, namely, the Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) in Kenya and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in Pakistan. Our analysis shows that both projects have led to a substantial loss of natural land (e.g., 3.7 % loss of vegetation in Kenya, and 23.3 % reduction of the glacier in Pakistan) but gains in artificial land (e.g., 4.2 % increase in cropland in Kenya, and 34.6 % expansion of built-up land in Pakistan). In addition, the BRI-LSIPs have largely improved local economic development, because nighttime light imagery revealed that regions near the BRI-LSIP sites became much brighter than other regions. Regarding the social aspect, we found that public sentiment toward the projects was largely positive and improved over time, which contradicts the prevalent pessimism to BRI-LSIPs by critics. Nevertheless, sentiment also presented strong spatial heterogeneity – regions around the BRI transportation hubs (usually large cities) most showed more positive sentiment than other regions. By spatially joining the georeferenced sentiment scores with environmental indicators from remote sensing, we further found that positive sentiment improved more in more developed regions, but only changed slightly in other regions. This study provides a novel approach to assess the socio-environmental impact of large-scale projects, and the findings would be useful for informing the implementation of future BRI projects across the globe.