An integrated Multi-Criteria Decision Making Model for Sustainability Performance Assessment for Insurance Companies

To stay competitive in a business environment, continuous performance evaluation based on the triple bottom line standard of sustainability is necessary. There is a gap in addressing the computational expense caused by increased decision units due to increasing the performance evaluation indices to more accuracy in the evaluation. We successfully addressed these two gaps through (1) using principal component analysis (PCA) to cut the number of evaluation indices, and (2) since PCA itself has the problem of merely using the data distribution without considering the domain-related knowledge, we utilized Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to rank the indices through the expert’s domain-related knowledge. We propose an integrated approach for sustainability performance assessment in qualitative and quantitative perspectives. Fourteen insurance companies were evaluated using eight economic, three environmental, and four social indices. The indices were ranked by expert judgment though an analytical hierarchy process as subjective weighting, and then principal component analysis as objective weighting was used to reduce the number of indices. The obtained principal components were then used as variables in the data envelopment analysis model. So, subjective and objective evaluations were integrated. Finally, for validating the results, Spearman and Kendall’s Tau correlation tests were used. The results show that Dana, Razi, and Dey had the best sustainability performance.This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability Assessmen

Performance evaluation of complex electricity generation systems

To evaluate the performance of complex electricity generation systems, a new dynamic network-based data envelopment analysis (DNDEA) approach is presented. Past data envelopment analysis (DEA) studies on energy system efficiency have often ignored the dynamics of each process of the system individually. Here a network-based DEA method is built, which considers the interrelationships of the operations to determine the efficacy of the system. For assessing the performance over successive periods, with time-based dependencies between the successive periods, a dynamic DEA (DDEA) model is proposed. In DDEA, a linear combination of the efficiencies in successive periods is used as the complement of the system. The network-based and dynamic features of the created model enable measuring the performance of each sub-system process and the entire system in multi-period planning horizons simultaneously. These features make the DEA model identify changes in system efficiencies so much better than the current approaches. The created model is comprehensively implemented in the Iranian electricity sector using real data. Based on the findings, the efficiencies of power generation and transmission sectors are decreasing while the distribution performance is increasing. The proposed model could be applied to electricity generation systems in other countries as well.Peer reviewe

An integrated Multi-Criteria Decision Making Model for Sustainability Performance Assessment for Insurance Companies

To stay competitive in a business environment, continuous performance evaluation based on the triple bottom line standard of sustainability is necessary. There is a gap in addressing the computational expense caused by increased decision units due to increasing the performance evaluation indices to more accuracy in the evaluation. We successfully addressed these two gaps through (1) using principal component analysis (PCA) to cut the number of evaluation indices, and (2) since PCA itself has the problem of merely using the data distribution without considering the domain-related knowledge, we utilized Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to rank the indices through the expert’s domain-related knowledge. We propose an integrated approach for sustainability performance assessment in qualitative and quantitative perspectives. Fourteen insurance companies were evaluated using eight economic, three environmental, and four social indices. The indices were ranked by expert judgment though an analytical hierarchy process as subjective weighting, and then principal component analysis as objective weighting was used to reduce the number of indices. The obtained principal components were then used as variables in the data envelopment analysis model. So, subjective and objective evaluations were integrated. Finally, for validating the results, Spearman and Kendall’s Tau correlation tests were used. The results show that Dana, Razi, and Dey had the best sustainability performance