Sustainable Evaluation Process Research Articles

Sustainability evaluation of sports tourism using a linguistic neutrosophic multi-criteria decision-making method.

Sports tourism represents a novel industrial manifestation of the profound integration between the tourism and sports sectors. The objective of this research is to examine an innovative multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method for the sustainability evaluation of sports tourism. The largest innovations are the expression and treatment of ambiguous data and interdependent evaluation criteria in the sports tourism sustainability evaluation process. On the one hand, intricate assessment data is represented using linguistic neutrosophic numbers (LNNs), which employ three linguistic variables to convey uncertainty and imprecision. On the other hand, to effectively capture the interrelationships among inputs, two novel aggregation operators are proposed. They are devised based on the Einstein operations and Heronian mean operators of LNNs. Subsequently, a linguistic neutrosophic evaluation method utilizing the aforementioned operators is presented. Comparative and sensitivity analyses conclude that great interdependence exists among five different dimensions of sustainability evaluation in sports tourism, and the proposed method can reflect the interrelations among inputs without redundant calculations.

Evaluation of positive and negative impacts of mining on sustainable development by a semi-quantitative method

Mining has contributed a significant role in improving societies to the modern civilization by providing the necessary raw minerals. The mining industry influences economic growth at the national and regional levels. This industry has also played a substantial role in improving the quality of human life by creating jobs, increasing life expectancy, skills and knowledge, contributing to the proper distribution of income, and improving infrastructure, public health services, and education. However, mining's various negative environmental and social consequences, such as land disturbance, water, soil, air pollution, and socio-cultural aspects, made mining a challenge to sustainable development. These impacts attracted the attention of the environmental defenders and legislators to investigate the impact of mining activity on the three indices of sustainable development; environment, Social, and economy. In most previous studies, only the negative impacts were considered in determining the level of sustainability or unsustainability, which may mislead the managers and policymakers to wrong and unreal decisions and strategies. In this study, for the first time, both positive and negative factors of the mining operation are incorporated simultaneously in the framework of a hybrid semi-quantitative model combined with a multi-criteria decision-making approach to evaluate the sustainability of the mining activities. The proposed holistic model identified 43 influential factors, including 22 positive and 21 negative factors, and their impacts on the proposed 13 sub-criteria of sustainable development were evaluated. The model is able to calculate the sustainability score for both negative and positive factors individually and in combination. The proposed model was verified in Sungun Copper Mine as large-scale open-pit mining. Analyses showed that “Social Relationship, Economic Growth and Productivity” and “Flora and Fauna, Landscape and Social Infrastructure Developments” are the two sets of three top sustainable development sub-criteria which contributed the most positive and negative impacts on the sustainability of mining activity, respectively. Results indicated that the mining operations in total are slightly sustainable, with a total score of 4.20, and have slightly enhanced the economic and social conditions while having posed unsustainability in the environmental index. Finally, as the proposed holistic model considers both negative and positive impacting factors, it will provide a realistic value for the individual and total sustainability score of mining activities. This model can also be used by other industries adopting their corresponding conditions, impacting factors, regulations, and laws in the sustainability evaluation process.

Social, political, and technological dimensions of the sustainability evaluation of a recycling network. A literature review

The development and implementation of recycling networks seems to be a promising way to cope with and mitigate the environmental problems of waste. As a mandatory condition, recycling networks must guarantee the achievement of sustainability requirements. Since the first proposal of the TBL (Triple Bottom Line) in the early 1990s, some authors have suggested that this model should be extended to include more dimensions. Recent studies have proposed that for a system to be sustainable, it should not only include the economic, environmental, and social dimensions but must also consider technological and political aspects and their subsequent sustainability indicators for their evaluation. In regard to recycling networks, however, social, technological, and political dimensions are still to be formalized to facilitate their use when designing recycling networks or evaluating their impact. In order to understand how these social, political, and technological dimensions should be integrated into the sustainability evaluation process of a potential recycling network, a systematic literature review has been conducted. A total of 160 journal articles were selected and analyzed. Information was identified on the problem addressed, the recycling domain, the methodologies used, and the social, technological, and political aspects under consideration. A set of social, political, and technological indicators to be considered for the main recycling network problems (design and planning, decision-making and performance evaluation, provider selection, price, and coordination) is then proposed. The main contribution of this work lies in the understanding for future research of how to consider social, political, and technological aspects taking into account the most common problems addressed in a recycling network. At the same time, findings and research gaps have been derived from these results. This study provides a basis for future work oriented toward the holistic evaluation of sustainable recycling networks. • First literature review on the social, political, and technological dimensions of sustainability in the evaluation of recycling networks. • Five social orientations were identified being the 'Job creation' (worker-oriented indicator) the most used. • Five technological aspects were mapped, where 'Capacity of facilities' (process.oriented factor) stand out as the most used. • Five political aspects were addressed being the incentive/punishment policies (e.g subsidies and taxes) the most studied. • A set of factors are proposed for each dimension and problem addressed in recycling networks.

Accountability through Sustainability Data Governance: Reconfiguring Reporting to Better Account for the Digital Acceleration

Accountability assessment is a highly relevant challenge for companies nowadays. The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a digital acceleration in business environments, which in turn brought more focus on sustainability practices that could help organizations better demonstrate their accountability, thus making them more resilient to the ever-changing socio-economic context. Therefore, this paper aims to evaluate how to further improve corporate accountability (on a strategic and operational level), taking advantage of the digitalization changes that companies are being forced to go through and applying them to the sustainability evaluation process, including the reporting as its final output. The first research outcome is a combined framework, based on data governance and sustainability literature models, seeking to optimize the manageability of sustainability data. The second outcome is a matrix, based on a content analysis of 20 sustainability reports, representing eight possible types of behavior that companies adopt when integrating digitalization practices into their sustainability evaluation process. The aim is to explore how the communication of digital activities could refine the diligence of the sustainability assessment process, with disclosure representing its last step. Finally, the ‘leading’ case was broken down into the general strategic components that could potentially be included in a balanced data-sustainability reporting strategy.

A Sustainable Evaluation Processes for Investments in the Transport Sector: A Combined Multi-Criteria and Cost–Benefit Analysis for a New Highway in Italy

In the transport sector, a rational and shared planning process is commonly based on the comparison of different design alternatives through quantitative evaluations and stakeholders’ engagement. Among the most adopted evaluation methods, there are cost–benefit analysis (CBA) and multi-criteria analysis (MCA). Both these methods have strengths and weaknesses, which do not allow the conclusion that one technique is dominant over the other. Starting from these considerations, the aim of this paper is to propose a sustainable evaluation process for investments in the transport sector, based on the combined use of both CBA and MCA analysis and a stakeholders’ engagement. The proposed evaluation method was also applied to a real case study: the decision-making process for a new highway in a high naturalistic and touristic area in north of Italy. Furthermore, a “weighted criteria process definition” based on the Delphi method was also performed within a public engagement process. Research results show that the application of both the evaluation analyses (CBA and MCA) allows the selection of the most rational althernative from a sustainable, shared and technical point of view. Precisely, the estimations performed underline that the CBA analysis significantly underestimated the non-users’ benefits, while the opposite occurred for the MCA analysis. The incidence of the non-users’ benefits is only the 14% of the total for the CBA, while it reaches more than the 79% for the MCA. This result is very relevant underling how, for a decision-making processes aimed in comparing different design alternatives for which non-users impacts are expected as relevant against the users ones, the unique application of the most consolidated CBA analyses are not always adequate, while the joint use of the two evaluation methods ensures robust and rational choices for a sustainable development.

A sustainability evaluation framework for WET-PPP projects based on a picture fuzzy similarity-based VIKOR method

Abstract This paper aims to construct a sustainability evaluation framework based on the extended VIsekriterijumska optimizacija i KOmpromisno Resenje (VIKOR) method under a picture fuzzy environment. First, a sustainability evaluation index system for water environment treatment public-private-partnership (WET-PPP) projects is constructed from the perspectives of the economy, engineering, environment, management, and society, including five criteria and 20 sub-criteria. The constructed index system considers engineering sustainability and management sustainability, and can thus more comprehensively evaluate the “sustainability” of the project and meet the requirements of the new economic environment. Second, a corresponding method for the sustainability evaluation of WET-PPP projects is proposed based on the picture fuzzy similarity-based VIKOR method. The main advantages of the proposed method include the following: (1) the sustainability evaluation process for WET-PPP projects involves linguistic terms and picture fuzzy numbers (PFNs), which can not only more comprehensively describe the uncertainty of human cognition and decision-making processes in the form of positive, neutral, and negative membership functions, but can also reduce the difficulty for decision-makers (DMs) to provide evaluation information; (2) the proposed evaluation method combines picture fuzzy similarity and the traditional VIKOR method, and can therefore not only obtain compromise solutions but can also ensure the stability and feasibility of the evaluation results. Finally, a case study of WET-PPP projects in China is provided to testify the feasibility and effectiveness of the constructed framework. The results indicate that the proposed framework can improve the accuracy of decision-making and can be applied for handling evaluation problems.

An Evaluation System for Sustainable Urban Space Development Based in Green Urbanism Principles—A Case Study Based on the Qin-Ba Mountain Area in China

Since the 20th century, the deterioration of the ecological environment around the world has challenged urban space construction. With the development of urbanization, the consumption of resources and energy has increased, the level of biodiversity has decreased, environmental pollution is approaching the critical level, and the contradiction between human habitat activity and ecological environment has become increasingly prominent. The sustainable development of urban space along with its economic and social benefits, taking into account the quality of life and ecological environment, has become a new and important subject that needs to be explored. In this study, the indices of the evaluation system for sustainable urban spatial development in regions with underdeveloped economies but rich in ecological resources are arranged in sequence through the systematic coupling analysis of collaborative evaluation information and a quantitative analysis. The influences of urban space elements on sustainable urban development are disclosed. On the basis of the generated data, an evaluation system for sustainable urban spatial development with a complete set of information is proposed. The proposed system is applicable to urban spatial development evaluation in regions in China with underdeveloped economies but rich in ecological capital. First, the basic concept of system coupling is introduced, and a coupling relationship between urban sustainable development and urban space is proposed. Second, the elements of urban space and the sustainable development in the Qin-Ba mountain area are extracted, and the precedence diagram method is used to construct a sustainable evaluation system for urban space development in the Qin-Ba mountain area. Third, the sustainable evaluation process of urban spatial development is proposed. Finally, the sustainable evaluation system for urban spatial development in the Qin-Ba mountain area is applied to evaluate the urban spatial development in Shangluo, Qin-Ling Mountains, China. The results show that, among the investigated 14 indicators, the proportion of industrial land use mainly influences sustainable urban spatial development. As for the rest of the index factors, per capita green land area and green coverage ratio of built-up areas, per capita urban construction land area, proportion of forestry area, greening rate of built-up areas, total industrial dust emission density, proportion of cultivated area, and average volume fraction of residential areas are the secondary influencing factors of sustainable urban spatial development. The evaluation system in this research is constructed with the three aspects of “green coordination”, “green development”, and “green sustainability” of sustainable urban spatial development, and it complements the evaluation contents of urban–rural ecological space coordination, land resource protection, and green development community, and so on. The conclusion of this study not only can provide a useful reference for urban spatial development planning for underdeveloped ecological capital areas of China but also can provide a theoretical basis for the management and control policy of sustainable urban spatial development.

Water security sustainability evaluation: Applying a multistage decision support framework in industrial region

Abstract Faced with risks aroused by the ever-increasing expansion of industrialization and urbanization, water security sustainability takes more and more effect on balancing regional sustainability and development, especially for industrial regions. Introducing sustainability into the indicator framework of water security is an indispensable issue should be addressed. The indicators of water security sustainability in practice are measured by observation data obtained from a monitoring period. These data are commonly expressed in various forms, such as ratio and qualitative linguistic, which makes them hard to be quantified and evaluated. As multiply influential criteria are involved the water security sustainability evaluation process, it can be treated as a multi-criteria decision making problem. An appropriate evaluation framework with scientific and strategic multi-criteria decision making techniques is supposed to be constructed. This paper incorporates the dimensions related to sustainability into the indicator framework of water security sustainability. Another contribution of this paper is that it establishes an observation data conversion standard and adopts linguistic distribution assessments as information representation. Linguistic distribution assessments can capture the natural characteristics of the observation data of water security sustainability indicators. More importantly, a multistage decision support framework integrated with multi-criteria decision making techniques, such as best-worst method (BWM), decision making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) and technique for order performance by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS), is constructed for water security sustainability evaluation. Then, deep analyzes about the evaluation results and influential factors are provided, thereby certifying the reliability of evaluation results and facilitating the enhancement of water security sustainability.

Strengthening the Energy Policy Making Process and Sustainability Outcomes in the OECD through Policy Design

This study investigates the nature of the energy policy making process and policy priorities within the OECD in order to identify opportunities for improvement in these processes and to improve sustainability outcomes. The Qualitative Content Analysis methodology is used, investigating governance and energy policy making alongside energy policy goals and priorities within eight OECD nations. A congruous energy policy making process (policy cycle) is discovered across the assessed nations, including the responsible bodies for each stage of the policy cycle and the current energy policy priorities. A key weakness was identified as a disconnect between the early stages of the policy cycle, issue identification and policy tool formulation, and the latter stages of implementation and evaluation. This weakness has meant that the social aspects of sustainability goals have been less developed than environmental and economic aspects and a heavy burden has been placed on the evaluation phase, risking a break down in the policy cycle. An additional “policy design” stage is proposed including a sustainability evaluation process prior to decision making and implementation, in order to remedy these identified shortcomings.

Greenhouse gas emissions mitigation strategies within the airport sustainability evaluation process

In recent years the aviation industry has initiated new sustainability efforts as a response to society's greater needs for living in healthier and more sustainable environments. Significant attention has been directed toward aircraft and their contribution to greenhouse gas emission. As we look at the aviation system more holistically, especially in the U.S., however, we discover a lack of comprehensive research addressing sustainability evaluation standards in airports. Sustainability, in a system as complex as an airport, can encompass many different areas such as water conservation, design and construction techniques, and emissions reduction. Because sustainability can encompass so many different aspects in the design, master planning, operations, and maintenance of an airport, airport managers can experience difficulty in analyzing how to plan for sustainability most effectively. As a response, this paper develops an evaluation process with the use of an influence matrix through which to determine effective sustainable practices at U.S. airports. This evaluation method attempts to quantify and thus improve decision-making in airport sustainability. By using a case study, we also look at airport emissions mitigation strategies that can be developed into a framework.

Considerações sobre o escopo de um processo de avaliação da sustentabilidade do turismo

A lot has been discussed about the need for tourism to develop in a sustainable way. However, for it to transcend discourse and be made effective into practice, it is necessary the presence of guidelines that indicate which aspects should be evaluated, for it is only through evaluation that one will find if the expected results were achieved. From that finding, arises an unavoidable question: what to evaluate? That questioning is, although fundamental to the operationalization of the sustainable tourism concept, still little discussed. The following article has the goal of suggesting and discussing a minimal content proposal to be observed in the scope of any tourism sustainability evaluation process. As a conclusion, it is suggested that, for it to achieve it's purposes, a tourism sector sustainability evaluation process shall: i) adopt a vision about sustainable development; ii) establish a effective communication process with the stakeholders; iii) be able to provide relevant information to the decision making process; iv) contemplate public participation; v) be able to adapt to new circumstances.