Comparative study of multi-criteria decision analysis methods in environmental sustainability

Abstract

Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) is an operations research framework used to support decision-makers in choosing alternatives characterized by multiple conflicting criteria. Over the past years, several MCDA methods have been developed and a significant drawback of using more than one algorithm for a given problem is the potential conflicting ranking that they may yield. This work aims at setting the first steps toward a systematic framework that reconciles different rankings from MCDA methods and returns to the decision maker a unique solution. The proposed method is contextualised within the existing scientific literature and illustrated considering four case studies to select environmentally sustainable solutions. Results show that a ranking agreed by multiple MCDA methods is more reliable than a ranking obtained by one method.