Discussion and Conclusions
[11] A few caveats need to be discussed to place Figure 1 into perspective. First, the thresholds used to define the different index categories and the values of the factor n in Equation 1 were subjectively chosen based on the distribution of the changes. However, the actual values of these thresholds are not important, as the main objective of the RCCI analysis is to compare regions with each other and not to provide an absolute measure of change. Changes in these thresholds might lead to variations in the RCCI regional values, but would not modify the overall picture given by Figure 1. As already mentioned, the RCCI is a comparative index and does not reflect absolute changes.