MCDA for Sustainability Assessment

Decision-making with regard to sustainability assessment of energy technologies and systems is complex due to sometimes conflicting goals (e.g. low cost for the end user, minimum environmental impact, maximum social acceptance) and requires an integrated consideration of economic, environmental and social criteria. Among the various approaches and methodologies available to conduct sustainability assessment, Multi-criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) has been recognized as a powerful and – in the field of energy – widely applied supporting tool given its flexibility and ability to organize available information and to integrate relevant stakeholders.

MCDA methods can be divided into Multi-Objective Decision Making (MODM) and Multi-Attribute Decision Making (MADM). In the context of decision-making for sustainability, MADM is preferred as it allows the comparison of a finite number of well-defined alternatives and criteria. MCDA methods have a flexible (and often complex) structure that makes it difficult to find a standard procedure for their application; however, in a general context, MCDA typically includes the following steps: problem definition (including alternatives selection), criteria selection, evaluating alternatives, eliciting weights, preference aggregation.

Despite the advantages of MCDA in enhancing decision-making processes, its application to sustainability assessment is still limited by the need for in-deep knowledge on different scientific disciplines in the field of economy, ecology, and society. Moreover, the extensive efforts and time required to execute relevant steps, such as identifying relevant stakeholders and execution of participatory formats, further hinder its utilization in this context.

To overcome these hurdles, the Helmholtz Working Group on MCDA works on three main challenges for the application of MCDA in sustainability assessment: stakeholders’ integration, selection of sustainability criteria and indicators, and selection of MCDA methods.