Evaluating quality of life in rapidly urbanizing industrial region of Eastern India utilizing census and geospatial data driven approaches for urban sustainability

Urban centers, being the growth engines of economic development and prosperity, often face substantial challenges in ensuring a balanced and resilient quality of life for their inhabitants. While major cities are typically the focus, rapidly urbanizing industrial agglomerations, despite facing similar or even more severe issues, have been largely overlooked in quality of life assessments. Therefore, our present research seeks to address this gap by evaluating neighbourhood-level urban quality of life (UQoL) in a rapidly urbanizing Asansol-Kulti-Jamuria-Raniganj industrial region. By a combination of 40 indicators across five domains, the study employed subjective (FAHP) and objective (CRITIC) multicriteria decision-making techniques to create the UQoLI. Additionally, TOPSIS was utilized to rank neighbourhoods based on UQoLI, while ROC–AUC and sensitivity analyses were conducted to assess the robustness of the index. The findings of UQoLI showed that a significant portion of the region (59.82% in FAHP and 61.35% in CRITIC) fell into very low and low UQoL categories, with only 19.36% and 17.7% classified as very high and high, respectively. TOPSIS identified neighbourhoods 40, 41, 57, and 113 as having very high quality of life, while neighbourhoods 70, 72, and 84 ranked lowest. The AUC-ROC analysis showed that the FAHP-derived UQoLI performed better (AUC of 0.868) than the CRITIC-derived UQoLI. The sensitivity analysis confirmed that no single indicator disproportionately influenced the UQoLI outcomes. The study’s findings emphasize the importance of spatially informed, indicator-based approaches to guide targeted strategies that promote balanced urban growth and long-term urban sustainability.