Life cycle sustainability assessment for multi-criteria decision making in bridge design: A review

Sustainable design of infrastructures has become a major matter of study since the recent establishment of the Agenda 2030. This paper provides a systematic literature review on the use of multi-criteria decision making techniques used so far for the sustainable design of bridges. Special attention is put as well on how the reviewed studies assess the sustainable performance of bridge designs along their life cycle from the economic, the environmental and the social perspective. Although SAW and AHP are recurrently used in the sustainable assessment of bridges, the analysis of the most recent articles show that the application of TOPSIS and PROMETHEE techniques are gaining increasing relevance for such purpose. Most of the studies focus on the research of the construction and the maintenance stage of bridges. However, a need for further analysis is identified when it comes to the assessment of the impacts resulting from the End of Life cycle stage of bridges from a sustainable point of view. The use of intuitionistic and neutrosophic logic have been detected as emerging alternatives to the fuzzy approach of decision making problems

Un enfoque de sustentabilidad utilizando lógica difusa y minería de datos

[ES] Sustainable development goals are now the agreed criteria to monitor states, and this work will demonstrate that numerical and graphical methods are valuable tools in assessing progress. Fuzzy Logic is a reliable procedure for transforming human qualitative knowledge into quantitative variables that can be used in the reasoning of the type “if, then” to obtain answers pertaining to sustainability assessment. Applications of machine learning techniques and artificial intelligence procedures span almost all fields of science. Here, for the first-time, unsupervised machine learning is applied to sustainability assessment, combining numerical approaches with graphical procedures to analyze global sustainability. CD HJ-Biplots to portray graphically the sustainability position of a large number of countries are a useful complement to mathematical models of sustainability. Graphical information could be useful to planners it shows directly how countries are grouped according to the most related sustainability indicators. Thus, planners can prioritize social, environmental, and economic policies and make the most effective decisions. One could graphically observe the dynamic evolution of sustainability worldwide over time with a graphical approach used to draw relevant conclusions. In an era of climate change, species extinction, poverty, and environmental migration, such observations could aid political decision-making regarding the future of our planet. A large number of countries remain in the areas of moderate or low sustainability. Fuzzy logic has proven to be an uncontested numerical method as it occurs with SAFE. An unsupervised learning method called Variational Autoencoder interplay Graphical Analysis (VEA&GA) has been proposed, to support sustainability performance with appropriate training data. The promising results show that this can be a sound alternative to assess sustainability, extrapolating its applications to other kinds of problems at different levels of analysis (continents, regions, cities, etc.) further corroborating the effectiveness of the unsupervised training methods

Environmentally Extended Input–Output Analysis of the UK Economy: Key Sector Analysis

The paper assesses the sustainability of investment in various economic sectors, with the aim of minimizing resource use and generation of emissions. The broad development focus of the paper and the potential for the proposed methodology to be applied in many different countries make it a useful methodological contribution to the global sustainability debate. The UK case is taken for illustration purposes, and (given the availability of the necessary data) this methodology could be applied in countries with various economic structures and specialisations. An environmentally extended static 123-sector UK input–output model is used, linking a range of physical flows (domestic extraction, use of water, and emissions of CO2, CH4, NOx) with the economic structure of the UK. A range of environmentally adjusted forward and backward linkage coefficients has been developed, adjusted according to final demand, domestic extraction, publicly supplied and directly abstracted water, amd emissions of CO2 and NOx,. The data on the final demandadjusted and environmentally adjusted forward and backward linkage coefficients were used in a multi-criteria decision-aid assessment, employing a NAIADE method in three different sustainability settings. The assessment was constructed in such a way that each sector of the UK economy was assessed by means of a panel of sustainability criteria, maximizing economic effects and minimizing environmental effects. This type of multi-criteria analysis, applied here for the first time, could prove to be a valuable basis for similar studies, especially in the developing world, where trade-offs between economic development and environmental protection have been the subject of considerable debate.input–output analysis; environmentally extended; MCDA; key sectors; sustainability; ecological economics; UK

Multicriteria Decision Making in Sustainable Tourism and Low-Carbon Tourism Research: A Systematic Literature Review

Multicriteria Decision Making (MCDM) is increasingly being utilized as an analytical research tool for sectors that require decision-making with specific objectives and constraints, such as the tourism industry. Sustainable tourism, which examines the balance of numerous aspects, including stakeholders’ interests, is the critical feature propelling the increased usage of MCDM. This paper explores the use of Multicriteria Decision Making (MCDM) methods applied in studies of sustainable tourism and its derivative term, low-carbon tourism, using a systematic literature review (SLR) search from the Scopus database. The analysis has identified 189 relevant studies published between 1987 to April 2022. After selection, screening, and synthesizing processes, we selected 135 pertinent studies, which were analysed in general descriptive data, citation impacts, geographical categorization, categorization of the methodologies’ objectives, and possible trajectories of similar research in the future. We find that highly cited authors and articles are related to sustainable tourism indicators\u27 development and case studies. Furthermore, most relevant studies are concentrated in Asia and Europe rather than other regions. We also categorize the reviewed studies into six classifications depending on each method\u27s intended usage and further suggest four contexts for the studies’ future trajectory

Estimation of Performance Indices for the Planning of Sustainable Transportation Systems

In the context of sustainable transportation systems, previous studies have either focused only on the transportation systemor have not used a methodology that enables the treatment of incomplete, vague, and qualitative information associated with the available data. This study proposes a system of systems (SOS) and a fuzzy logic modeling approach. The SOS includes the Transportation, Activity, and Environment systems. The fuzzy logic modeling approach enables the treatment of the vagueness associated with some of the relevant data. Performance Indices (PIs) are computed for each system using a number of performance measures. The PIs illustrate the aggregated performance of each system as well as the interactions among them. The proposed methodology also enables the estimation of a Composite Sustainability Index to summarize the aggregated performance of the overall SOS. Existing data was used to analyze sustainability in the entire United States. The results showed that the Transportation and Activity systems follow a positive trend, with similar periods of growth and contractions; in contrast, the environmental system follows a reverse pattern. The results are intuitive and are associated with a series of historic events, such as depressions in the economy as well as policy changes and regulations