Environmental indicators for national state of the environment reporting: human settlements

A key set of 104 environmental indicators for human settlements is recommended for Australian state of the environment reporting at the national scale. Of these, 48 relate to the condition of human settlements in relation to their three constituent elements: the physical environment (e.g. air quality), the built environment (e.g. housing), and the human environment (e.g. environmentally related human health such as waterborne diarrhoeal outbreaks); 44 relate to pressures on the physical environment by activities associated with human settlements. Monitoring strategies and approaches to interpreting and analysing each of the indicators are discussed, and possible sources of data are noted. Recomendatons are also made for further development of environmental indicators for human settlements.