Integrating Ecosystem and Community Resilience in Peri-Urban Indonesia through GIS-Based Multi-Criteria Analysis

Peri-urbanisation—the transformation of rural areas into urbanised landscapes—is an emerging issue in many smalls to mid-sized cities across the Global South. In the Upper Citarum River Basin, the expansion of the Bandung Metropolitan Area has intensified industrialisation and land conversion, straining local governance and community capacity. Inadequate environmental assessment and the extensive use of chemical fertilisers since the Green Revolution have degraded soils and polluted rivers. These pressures have fragmented ecosystems, altered their structure and composition, and reduced biodiversity that is essential for maintaining ecosystem health and the capacity to provide key services such as water regulation, soil fertility, and climate buffering. At the same time, peri-urban communities experience declining well-being and low preparedness for climate-related disasters. Addressing these interconnected ecological and social challenges requires spatially explicit and integrative approaches. This study applies a domain-based GIS–MCDA framework to assess community resilience by linking ecosystem condition and biodiversity with human well-being. Twenty-six spatial indicators across four domains—environmental sustainability, water security, disaster resilience, and well-being—capture how ecological integrity and socio-economic conditions interact to shape resilience at the village scale. Factor analysis and K-means clustering were used to delineate management zones based on shared socio-ecological characteristics, translating analytical results into actionable spatial units. Indicator weighting combines statistical sensitivity analysis with community-informed priorities derived from ethnographic materials from previous research, ensuring analytical rigour and contextual relevance. The results reveal pronounced socio-ecological gradients: biodiversity and ecosystem health decline toward urban centres, where built-up pressures intensify, while rural highland areas retain higher ecological functionality yet face livelihood constraints. Approximately 70% of villages exhibit low well-being and limited disaster preparedness, highlighting trade-offs between ecological and social domains. The resulting management zones provide evidence-based pathways for resilience planning through watershed restoration, agroforestry, sustainable water governance, and the integration of ecosystem services into spatial strategies. By linking biodiversity, ecosystem health, and community resilience within a spatial framework, this approach offers a transferable model for managing peri-urban transitions that sustain both ecosystems and human well-being.