Fuente: Sustainability - Revista científica (MDPI) Sustainability, Vol. 18, Pages 2607: Robust Multiblock STATICO for Modeling Environmental Indicator Structures: A Methodological Framework for Sustainability Monitoring in Complex Systems
Sustainability doi: 10.3390/su18052607
Authors:
Harry Vite-Cevallos
Omar Ruiz-Barzola
Purificación Galindo-Villardón

Sustainability monitoring relies on environmental indicator systems that integrate heterogeneous multivariate measurements across space and time; however, collinearity, non-Gaussian variability, and influential observations frequently destabilize classical multiblock methods and may bias indicator-based assessment and decision support. This study proposes a robust extension of the STATICO (STATIS–CO-inertia) framework to model common structures among paired environmental indicator blocks under realistic data contamination. The approach preserves the original triadic algebraic formulation while incorporating robust covariance estimation and adaptive weighting to reduce the influence of outliers and structurally unstable blocks. Robustification is implemented at the interstructure stage through a reformulated Escoufier’s RV coefficient and in the construction of the compromise space via robust distances. The RV coefficient, a multivariate generalization of the squared Pearson correlation computed between cross-product matrices, is used to quantify structural similarity between paired data blocks and to evaluate the stability of the compromise structure. Performance is evaluated using simulated datasets calibrated to represent Ecuadorian coastal monitoring conditions. The results show that Robust STATICO increases compromise dominance and stability, redistributes inter-block similarities more coherently, and improves discriminative representation in the factorial space, yielding more interpretable and environmentally plausible structures. Overall, the proposed method provides a reliable analytical tool for sustainability-oriented environmental monitoring by supporting stable identification of persistent multivariate patterns and robust comparison of indicator structures in complex systems.