This research used the Sustainability and Future Settlement Patterns in Ireland (SFSPI) database to explore spatial relationships between sustainable development indicators. The SFSPI is an EPA-Funded project that examined the relative sustainability of 79 Irish settlements across 3 regions of Ireland. The resulting database contains 43 sustainable development indicators and indices for Environmental, Socio-economic, Quality of Life, and Transport domains. A Geographically weighted Regression technique was used to reveal spatial variations in the relationships between sustainable development indicators. Many expected relationships were found to vary in nature or magnitude across regions. A Geographic Information System (GIS) and a custom built scenario tool were used to model and visualize policy scenarios using Ecological Footprint (EF) indicators and components from the SFSPI database. A scenario tool within the GIS was developed for this research to simulate the relative effects of policies on the EFs of a settlement, group of settlements, or region.
