Towards Strong Sustainability Management—A Generalized PROSA Method

Abstract

To solve decision problems related to sustainability, MCDA (Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis) methods are commonly used. However, from the methodological and practical perspective of sustainability assessment, MCDA methods have some shortcomings. To address this, the PROSA (PROMETHEE for Sustainability Assessment) method was designed. In contrast to other MCDA methods, PROSA is characterized by a lower degree of criteria compensation, thus supporting the strong sustainability paradigm. However, PROSA has some imperfections related to, among other things, its taking into consideration only basic sustainability dimensions and lack of criteria hierarchy handling. This article proposes a generalization of the PROSA method towards handling detailed criteria and their groups, while at the same time increasing the clarity of the computational procedure. Additionally, a new analytical tool called PROSA GAIA (Geometrical Analysis for Interactive Assistance) was developed, making it possible to perform descriptive analyses of decision problems. The practical advancements of the proposed method were illustrated using a reference case covering the sustainable decision making area, and were compared to other MCDA methods. The obtained research results clearly show that the generalized PROSA handles the strong sustainability paradigm better than its classical version, while at the same time providing the decision-maker with more possibilities to analyse a decision problem and its solution.