Indicator Principles
Document Actions
The following are a set of principles adopted by the Steering Committee that together form the guidelines that will lead to successful development of a set of sustainability indicators.
- Link human and ecological wellbeing: Seek to measure the status or effect of interdependence between the wellbeing of humans and the health of natural ecosystems
- Diverse groups: Include people from a variety of experiences including across age and income, ethnic and race, geographic location, expertise.
- Engaging: Draw peoples attention and engage them in understanding sustainability concepts and how they apply to indicator selection.
- Understandable: Indicator data and analyses can be easily understood by citizens
- Collaborative and consensus based: Process of developing indicators is accomplished through collaboration of many people and based on consensus-style decisions
- Continuity of participation: Participants attend all meetings and most commit to on-going participation in projects developed by this project.
- Considering cross-boundary effects: Address flows and effects crossing the King County boarder as well as conditions and process inside those borders.
- Capacity building / catalyze action: Activities developing indicators will build skills, networks, and knowledge about using sustainability indicators and principles to solve problems. The experience will inspire people to further action
- Clear end point: Indicators will have a clear point identified, that when reached represents reaching a sustainable condition for that indicator and associated components.
- Broad involvement: Participants must be from all sectors and cover the variety of expertise implied by the indicator framework
- Stakeholder driven: Stakeholders initiate selection of indicators, with experts supporting developing of those indicators.
- Iterative learning dynamic: The sequence of events and activities and the specific participant tasks will constitute a stepped learning process, each successive step building on the previous one.