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University of Kufa, College of Education for Girls, Najaf, Iraq
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University of Kufa, Department of Geography, Faculty of Arts, Najaf, Iraq
Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of Kufa, Najaf, Iraq
The issue of transport sustainability evaluation is difficult in developing countries since transport growth does not necessarily reflect the improved state of environmental conditions, road safety, and efficiency. In Iraq, the data on transport sector performance is provided separately for each sector and thus cannot be evaluated collectively. The present paper proposes the development of the Iraq Sustainable Transport Index (I-STI), the national composite index reflecting transport sustainability for 2015–2023. The suggested framework is based on three dimensions, namely economic-operational performance, social safety, and environmental pressure. Five indicators were selected for evaluation, namely rail passenger-kilometres, rail freight tonne-kilometres, road mortality rate, road injury rate, and transport CO₂ emissions per capita. The indicators were scaled using min-max scaling, and the dimension weights were calculated as equal with entropy-based weighting used for robustness assessment. It was found that the sustainability of transport in Iraq declined significantly as the I-STI decreased from 0.556 in 2015 to 0.201 in 2023, which is 63.8%. The trend was found significant by means of Mann-Kendall analysis (τ = −0.611, p = 0.0247), with a Sen slope of −0.0555 index points per year. The environmental dimension demonstrated the largest deterioration due to a 45.6% increase in transport CO₂ emissions with a significant declining trend (τ = −0.722, p = 0.0059). The improvement in 2020 can be explained by the effects of the pandemic and not by any structural changes. Exclusion of 2020 strengthened the declining trend (τ = −0.857, p = 0.0017). Robustness assessment revealed identical results between weighting approaches (ρ = 1.000; mean absolute difference = 0.0165). The proposed I-STI provides an engineering decision-support framework for sustainable transport planning, emphasizing emission reduction, road safety, public transport improvement, and railway modal diversification.
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