Urban Regulation Biophysical Index (URBI): a SEEA-compliant integrated framework for the spatially explicit and decision-oriented assessment of regulation ecosystem services capacity at the local scale.

The implementation of Regulation (EU) 2024/1991 on Nature Restoration requires spatially explicit ecosystem services assessment and monitoring tools. Despite the SEEA EA framework providing a robust international accounting structure, its application at the local scale, the administrative level bearing the primary responsibility for European directives on the ground, remains constrained by documented operational and data availability challenges. This deposit presents URBI (Urban Regulation Biophysical Index), a composite indicator providing a spatially explicit proxy of the potential supply of regulation ecosystem services within urban and peri-urban ecomosaics, aligned with the SEEA EA ecosystem condition account. URBI integrates three sub-indices. A-Processes operationalises chemical, compositional, and functional condition through an expert-based scoring approach, adapted from a literature-grounded capacity matrix. B-Configuration characterises physical and structural condition through four spectral indices derived from Sentinel-2 and Landsat imagery in an adaptation of the RSEI framework. C-System assesses landscape context through two purpose-built indicators: the Anthropogenic Pressure Gradient (APG) and the Modified Proximity Index (MPROX). Sub-indices are aggregated through the Adjusted Mazziotta-Pareto Index (AMPI), introducing a non-compensatory aggregation logic that penalises territorially imbalanced ecological profiles. This choice reflects a systemic point of view aligned with the ecosystem services theory. By combining expert-based scoring, remote sensing biophysical characterisation, and patch-scale landscape ecology metrics into a single SEEA EA-aligned framework, URBI enables integrated ecosystem condition assessment at the individual asset scale, relying exclusively on freely accessible data and methods transparent to local decision-makers, making it uniformly applicable regardless of territorial context or institutional capacity. URBI is currently being applied in two municipalities within official planning instruments in the Province of Bergamo, Italy, providing first empirical validation of its operational feasibility. A full peer-reviewed publication is currently in preparation.