A comprehensive framework for assessing spatial conflicts risk: A case study of production-living-ecological spaces based on social-ecological system framework

Against the backdrop of rapid global urbanization, the expansion of urban-rural spaces has led to conflicts among production-living-ecological spaces, resulting in a progressive decline in global ecological well-being. Coordinating spatial conflicts to minimize the reduction in ecological well-being is a critical scientific issue urgently needing resolution in current national spatial planning. In fact, the existing studies concentrates on the mechanisms, conceptual implications, evolutionary processes, and optimization simulations of historical spatial conflicts, yielding significant achievements. However, spatial conflicts are irreversible. Compared to studying historical spatial conflicts, assessing spatial conflicts risk which refer to potential occurrence of future spatial conflicts can provide more direct and robust support for optimizing territorial spatial planning. Unfortunately, there is a lack of research on the theory and methods of spatial conflicts risk assessment to date. To fill this gap, take the Production-Living-Ecological (PLE) spaces as a case study, social-ecological system framework (advance in deconstructing complex systems) and the land use function theory (advance in spatial quantification) have been combined to systematically construct a comprehensive framework and method for assessing PLE spatial conflicts risk. This newly framework analyzes the formation mechanism of conflicts risk from the dimensions of spatial pattern and governance. Furthermore, a quantitative and refined assessment method for PLE space conflicts risk at the raster scale is developed based on this framework, coupling coordination degree model, and multivariate data. The feasibility of this framework and method is validated through a case study of Zhangbei County, Hebei Province in China, a typical county in an ecologically fragile mountainous area. Moreover, we establish adaptive selection strategy to PLE space optimization under different governance scenarios based on the assessment result of PLE space conflicts risk. Findings of this research contribute new theoretical and methodological insights into addressing spatial conflicts issues while we are facing a more complex regional and urban system and fragmented governance. The case study will serve as a reference for counties in the northern mountainous area of Hebei Province and similar ecologically fragile mountain counties in planning and controlling coordinated and sustainable development of PLE space.