GResilient index to assess the greenness and resilience of the automotive supply chain

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to suggest an Index entitled GResilient Index to assess the greenness and resilience of the automotive companies and corresponding supply chain. Design/methodology/approach: An integrated assessment model is proposed based on Green and Resilient practices. These practices are weighted according to their importance to the automotive supply chain competitiveness. The Delphi technique is used to obtain the weights for the focused supply chain paradigms and corresponding practices. The model is then tested using a case study approach in the automotive supply chain. Findings: The case study results confirmed the applicability of this Index in a real-world supply chain. The results show that the Resilient supply chain management paradigm is the one considered as the one that more contributes for the automotive supply chain competitiveness. Research limitations/implications: The proposed Index was developed in the automotive sector context therefore it could not be adjusted to a different one. Future research could consider other aggregation methods for the Index construction. Practical implications: Supply chain participants will be able to evaluate the performance of their companies or supply chain in terms of Green and Resilient paradigms. Also, the Index can be effectively employed for functional benchmarking among competing companies and supply chains.Green; resilient; supply chain management; index; automotive industry

Measuring the immeasurable: a survey of substainability indices

Sustainability indices for countries provide a one-dimensional metric to valuate country-specific information on the three dimensions of sustainable development: economic, environmental, and social conditions. At the policy level, they suggest an unambiguous yardstick against which a country?s development can be measured and even a cross-country comparison can be performed. This paper reviews the explanatory power of various sustainability indices applied in policy practice. We show that these indices fail to fulfill fundamental scientific requirements making them rather useless if not misleading with respect to policy advice. --Sustainability Indices,Composite Indicators,Sustainability,Indices

A multicriteria analysis of photovoltaic systems: Energetic, environmental, and economic assessments

The development of photovoltaic (PV) energy has led to rising efficiencies, better reliability, and falling prices. A multicriteria analysis (MCA) of PV systems is proposed in this paper in order to evaluate the sustainability of alternative projects. The investigations are presented using multiple indicators: Energy Payback Time (EPBT), Energy Return on Investment (EROI), Greenhouse Gas per kilowatt-hour (GHG/kWh), Greenhouse Gas Payback Time (GPBT), Greenhouse Gas Return on Investment (GROI), Net Present Value (NPV), Discounted Payback Time (DPBT), and Discounted Aggregate Cost Benefit (D(B/C) A). PV energy is a relevant player in global electricity market and can have a key-role in sustainable growth

Development of a conceptual framework for integrated analysis and assessment of agricultural systems in SEAMLESS-IF

Production Economics,

Sensitivity Analysis of Composite Indicators through Mixed Model Anova

The paper proposes a new approach for analysing the stability of Composite Indicators. Starting from the consideration that different subjective choices occur in their construction, the paper emphasizes the importance of investigating the possible alternatives in order to have a clear and objective picture of the phenomenon under investigation. Methods dealing with Composite Indicator stability are known in literature as Sensitivity Analysis. In such a framework, the paper presents a new approach based on a combination of explorative and confirmative analysis aiming to investigate the impact of the different subjective choices on the Composite Indicator variability and the related individual differences among the statistical units as well.sensitivity analysis,composite indicators,analysis of variance,principal component analysis

Use of rating systems in the process towards sustainable construction

Since the large scale industrialization occurred, the profit oriented human activity has led to a constantly growing environmental degradation. Nowadays, that the actual severity of the problem in hand is impossible to ignore and the spectrum of the future consequences emerges in its full extent, several actions towards the adaptation of sustainability principles in the most problematic sectors of human activity are undertaken. One of these sectors is building sector, incorporating the production, transport, use and replacement of building materials, the use of the building itself (energy consumption for lighting, ventilation, heating and cooling, water consumption etc), the reuse of the building or its materials, the demolition of the building and the disposal of the demolition products. The energy consumed in operating buildings serves as indication of the building sector’s contribution to the total environmental aggravation induced by human activity. According to (OECD, 2003), in the European OECD countries, the building sector consumes the highest amount of energy (40%) in comparison to the transport (22%) and industry sectors (38%). Given the fact that the afore-mentioned quantities include the energy amounts consumed only for the operation of the building, while other processes – unbreakably bonded to construction – such as manufacture and transport of building materials, are not cocalculated, an estimation regarding the impact of the building sector on the environment can be drawn.COST, European Science Foundatio

Measuring the Immeasurable : A Survey of Sustainability Indices

Sustainability indices for countries provide a one-dimensional metric to valuate country-specific information on the three dimensions of sustainable development: economic, environmental, and social conditions. At the policy level, they suggest an unambiguous yardstick against which a country’s development can be measured and even a cross-country comparison can be performed. This paper reviews the explanatory power of various sustainability indices applied in policy practice. We show that these indices fail to fulfill fundamental scientific requirements making them rather useless if not misleading with respect to policy advice

Composite indicators for measuring well-being of Italian municipalities

Well-being is a complex phenomenon. Multidimensionality is recognized in literature as its main feature. This phenomenon is in some aspects elusive and difficult to monitor, and the definition is the combination of heterogeneous components, which assume different meanings in different contexts. A universally accepted definition of well-being does not exist (yet): each country (or areas) attributes importance to dimensions that for others may not be as relevant, consistent with their culture and social dynamics. Accurate measurement of well-being is a prerequisite for the implementation of effective welfare policies, which, through targeted actions in the most critical areas, are geared to the progressive improvement of living conditions. Until some time ago, such a plurality of components was poorly valued, believing that the only income dimension could represent in an exhaustive way such a complex reality. For many years, GDP (Gross Domestic Product) has been an indisputable landmark for states all over the world, playing the key role in defining, implementing and evaluating the effects of government action. Recently, the international debate has questioned the supremacy of GDP, and initiatives have been launched which, through the involvement of a growing number of countries, aim to develop alternative ways of measuring well-being that assign the same value to its components, Economic, Social and Environmental. Since well-being, as mentioned above, is a multidimensional phenomenon then it cannot be measured by a single descriptive indicator and that it should be represented by multiple dimensions. It requires, to be measured, the “combination” of different dimensions, to be considered together as components of the phenomenon (Mazziotta and Pareto, 2013). This combination can be obtained by applying methodologies known as composite indicators (Salzman, 2003; Mazziotta and Pareto, 2011; Diamantopoulos et al., 2008). In this ever-evolving scenario, the Italian experience is represented by the BES (Equitable and Sustainable Well-Being) project that is now considered globally as the most advanced experience of study and analysis. It consists in a dashboard of 134 individual indicators distributed in 12 domains. In the last three BES reports, published in December 2015, 2016 and 2017 by Istat (Italian Institute of Statistics) (Istat, 2015; Istat, 2016; Istat 2017), composite indicators at regional level and over time were calculated for the 9 outcome domains, creating a unique precedent in the official statistics at international level. Recently, the debate has become from a scientific to a policy scope: parliamentary and local administrators are affirming the necessity to link the Istat well-being indicators to interventions/actions in the socio-economic field, thus constructing an even stronger connection between official statistics and policy evaluation. In fact, the Italian Parliament has finally approved on 2016 July 28 the reform of the Budget Law, in which it is expected that the BES indicators, selected by an ad hoc Committee, are included in the Document of Economics and Finance (DEF). The new regulations also provide that by February 15th of each year Parliament receives by the Minister of Economy a report on the evolution of the BES indicators. A Committee for equitable and sustainable well-being indicators is established, chaired by the Minister of Economics and composed by the President of Istat, the Governor of the Bank of Italy and two experts coming from universities or research institutions (Mazziotta, 2017). The project, from national, is becoming local and already several local authorities, although they not have legislative obligations, are studying the well-being indicators of their territory. With these assumptions, it seems necessary to calculate well-being measures for all Italian municipalities so that administrators and citizens can dispose of them to understand and decide better policies. Since the current statistical surveys do not provide socio-economic indicators disaggregated at municipalities level (Census is the only source, every ten years and it does not collect all the information contained in the BES), it is necessary to use administrative sources, hopefully, collected in informative systems. The thesis wants to present an experimental statistics conducted on all the municipalities of Italy where nine domains of BES are selected (Population, Health, Education, Labour, Economic well-being, Environment, Economy on the territory, Research and Innovation, Infrastructure and Mobility) and the twenty individual indicators are selected so that they can represent the phenomenon at the municipal level. The individual indicators are calculated starting from administrative sources and then composite indicators are computed in order to have a unidimensional measure. The theoretical framework adopted is represented, therefore, by the conceptual and methodological one developed by Istat and CNEL (National Council of Economy and Labour) for the BES project (Istat, 2015). The structure of the domains and the selection of indicators are derived from the national BES. In each of the domains, some individual indicators are selected so that the starting matrix has 7,998 rows (the municipalities) and a variable numbers of columns (the indicators). A Composite indicator for each domain is calculated and then a unique composite indicator that synthesizes all the composite indicators is computed. Different composite indicators are calculated in order to assess the robustness of the methodologies. The results present interesting reflections also in the key of economic planning. Therefore, the aim of the thesis is to provide socio-economic indicators for measuring well-being at the municipal level. To achieve this goal it is necessary to define a theoretical framework, to build indicators matrix at the municipal level, to calculate composite indicators in order to obtain a simpler reading and interpretation of the data. The four chapters of the paper are designed to answer these research questions. The thesis is divide in two parts. The first, Theories and Methods, is composed by two chapters: “Theoretical framework: GDP versus well-being” in which recent well-being theories are presented with a view to supporting GDP; “Composite indicators: theories and methods” in which all the techniques for constructing composite indicators are presented in order to understand how synthesize data and measure multidimensional socio-economic phenomena. The second part, “Application to administrative data”, is composed by two chapters: Administrative data sources in which the data base ARCHIMEDE is described; Well-being of Italian municipalities where a robust composite indicator is applied to the domains and individual indicators in order to have a measure of well-being for all Italian municipalities. The analysis of the results leads to original conclusions in which the application of particular data classification methodologies contributes to the discussion concerning the use of databases from administrative sources for local economic planning based on well-being