Research on the impact assessment of urbanization on air environment with urban environmental entropy model: a case study

A new concept of urban environmental entropy was introduced to investigate the effect of urbanization on air environment considering the fact that rapid development of urbanization may have negative influence on the whole air environment system. The urban environmental entropies which were built based on the generalized thermodynamic entropy and the generalized statistic entropy, respectively. These two entropy models have been used to analyze the relationship between the development of urbanization and air environment. The negative entropy flow mechanism was proposed to reveal the advantages and approaches of regional cities in improving air environment system. A case study on 17 cities in Shandong Province of China showed that the values of urban environmental entropy were negative in most cities from 2001 to 2008, which implies that there is a positive correlation between the development of urbanization and air environment and that is a negative entropy development level in Shandong Province of China. In 2008, the urbanization of Qingdao city and Jinan city improved their air environments. Moreover, restraints for both cities in air environment improvement were recognized according to the analysis of negative entropy flow mechanism.