Purpose: The Living Environments Equity Index is a territorial tool developed to identify areas of significant urban vulnerability in order to prioritise and focus community investment. It highlights locations with a combination of social, economic and environmental vulnerabilities, as well as challenges related to access to local resources, cultural amenities, sports and leisure facilities and urban safety.
Structure: In the light of recent city initiatives (such as the Écho-Baromètre survey and the GBA+ tools), it has become increasingly clear that certain neighbourhoods are disproportionately affected by widespread precariousness and limited access to city services.
Process: The data set covers:
- 23 indicators divided into six dimensions of equity
- six sub-indices representing the dimensions of equity
- the living environments equity index
The weighting method used in the Living Environment Index is Principal Component Analysis (PCA). PCA is performed separately for each of the six dimensions, resulting in six sub-indices. Once the sub-indices have been calculated, they are converted into quintiles. The factor scores for each sub-index are thus classified into five groups, each containing 20% of the distribution areas. To identify the most vulnerable environments, areas in the fourth and fifth quintiles of the social, economic, environmental and urban safety sub-indices are given a score of 1, while the others are given a score of 0. In the case of the local resources and culture, sport and leisure sub-indices, areas in the first and second quintiles are given a score of 1, while the others are given a score of 0. The six sub-indices are converted into binary variables, with a score of 1 corresponding to a high level of vulnerability. The Living Environments Equity Index is calculated by adding the scores (0 or 1) of each distribution area for each sub-index. The resulting Living Environments Equity Index ranges from 0 to 6 and is interpreted as the number of cumulative vulnerabilities in a dissemination area, with six being the maximum.
As the threshold of four vulnerabilities is the minimum threshold, only those areas with at least four vulnerabilities should be selected for prioritisation of urban interventions and investments.
Key reference documents:
