Sustainability, Vol. 18, Pages 2577: Sustainable Development in the Regional Economic Security System: Assessment Methodology and Management Tools

Fuente: Sustainability - Revista científica (MDPI)
Sustainability, Vol. 18, Pages 2577: Sustainable Development in the Regional Economic Security System: Assessment Methodology and Management Tools
Sustainability doi: 10.3390/su18052577
Authors:
Anna Polukhina
Marina Y. Sheresheva
Dmitry Napolskikh
Vladimir Lezhnin

The paper presents a comprehensive methodological system for assessing the level of economic security of Russian regions, based on the synthesis of several complementary approaches and accounting for regional specifics. The central idea is a shift from static monitoring to dynamic analysis, which allows not only for capturing the current state but also for identifying the direction and stability of trends over time. The proposed methodology based on four stages: forming a set of indicators, normalizing their values, aggregating them into integral indices, and then visualizing them for operational decision-making. An important feature of sustainable development is the introduction of mechanisms to account for regional specifics through the clustering of regions and adjustment coefficients, which helps to mitigate the influence of geographical and structural differences on the results comparability. Together, they form an integrated system for diagnosing, planning, and monitoring the economic security of regions. The paper provides examples of threshold values for indicators such as the share of households with internet access, the length of the road network, birth rate, the volume of building commissioning, and innovation expenditures. A classification of regions into stability zones and recommendations for policy measures within each zone accompany the threshold analysis. In particular, for digitalization and transport infrastructure, measures are proposed to enhance monitoring, improve service accessibility, and invest in infrastructure; for the demographic component, measures are proposed to support families and improve quality of life. The practical significance of the research lies in creating a universal, yet flexible, toolkit for monitoring, ranking, and planning regional policy in the field of economic security. The proposed system was designed for application both at the federal level and for interregional analysis, including scenario planning and modeling the impact of management decisions. Thus, this study contributes to the literature by bridging the theory of economic security, the imperatives of sustainable regional development, and the practical potential of information technologies. It offers a concrete, scalable methodology for transforming regional economic security management into a data-driven, forward-looking, and context-sensitive process. In the future, the authors intend to further develop the methodology by considering the sectoral specialization of regions, integrating with medium- and long-term forecasting systems, and creating an automated monitoring platform.