Evaluating the environmental effects of transportation modes using an integrated methodology and an application

The increasing needs for transportation of freight and passengers causes environmental impacts. Preventing studies for these impacts should be considered by logistics firms and encouraged by the regulations of authorities. An important contribution can be provided by determining the environmental effects of the transportation modes in specific regions and using the most convenient ones. In this study, multiple criteria decision-making techniques, including human judgments, tangible and intangible criteria and priorities are used. Fuzzy analytic hierarchy process and preference ranking organization method for enrichment evaluation, as two of the multi criteria decision-making methodologies, are integrated for ranking the transportation modes in terms of the environmental effects of them. The proposed decision-making process is applied to chose the environmentally convenient transportation mode with respect to the determined evaluation criteria in Marmara Region of Turkey. The results indicate that, the main problem for the Marmara Region about transportation aspects is to pass from the intensive utilization of the road transportation mode to another one. In this study it is seen that the most convenient transformation mode in Marmara Region is the sea transportation mode

Environmental performance evaluation of suppliers: A hybrid fuzzy multi criteria decision approach

Increasing environmental problems enforce companies to be more environmental responsible. A company's environmental performance is not only related to the company's inner environmental efforts, but also it is affected by the suppliers' environmental performance and image. As a stakeholder of the company, a supplier with bad environmental image affects badly the company's environmental image. Also, raw materials and semi-finished products supplied from out of the company recourses- suppliers- affects the products environmental features such as life cycle, re-usability, re-manufacturability, hazardous substances, etc. Considering these direct and indirect effects, managers should also consider environmental performances of their suppliers in their supplier evaluation process. In this paper, a methodology for the evaluation of suppliers' environmental performances is proposed. In this methodology, a hybrid Fuzzy-Analytic Network Process and Fuzzy-Preference Ranking Organization METHod for Enrichment Evaluations approach is utilized. Additionally, a numerical example is given to foster the better understanding of the methodology and the obtained results are analyzed with sensitivity analyses

Rethinking sustainable urban development: towards an integrated planning and development process

A city is the most dramatic manifestation of human activities on the environment. This human dominated organism degrades natural habitats, simplifies species composition, disrupts hydrological systems, and modifies energy flow and nutrient cycling. Sustainable urban development is seen as a panacea to minimise these externalities caused by widespread human activities on the environment. The concept of sustainable urban development has been around over a considerably long-time as the need to adopt environmentally sustainable behaviours made the international community commit to it. However, to date such development has not been achieved in large scales anywhere around the globe. This review paper aims to look at the sustainable urban development concept from the lens of planning and development integration to generate new insights and directions. The paper reports the outcome of the review of the literature on planning and development approaches—i.e., urban planning, ecological planning, urban development, sustainable urban development—and proposes a new process to support the efforts for achieving sustainable urban development—i.e., integrated urban planning and development process. The findings of this review paper highlights that adopting such holistic planning and development process generate a potential to further support the progress towards achieving sustainability agendas of our cities

Integrating multicriteria evaluation and data visualization as a problem structuring approach to support territorial transformation projects

Large freight or passenger transport projects are problematic and controversial because many financial, technical, environmental and social aspects need to be considered. Indeed, the interface between the transport project and territorial planning domains is generally the focus of considerable heated debates, which often develop into conflicting decision contexts characterized by a high level of complexity. This paper presents a possible response to these difficulties through an innovative approach that integrates the analytic network process and the interactive visualization tool. The approach is intended to be deployed as problem structuring method, with a view to creating a common language for the actors involved and a shared basis for generating fruitful discussions. The proposed approach was applied in the context of the German section of the Genoa–Rotterdam railway corridor within the Interreg IVB NWE Project ‘‘Code24’’. The reported application shows how the combination of visualization and real-time interaction with spatial data provided effective decision support to a multinational stakeholder group. More generally, the application presented in this paper aims to demonstrate the potential of the approach for the selection of a transport improvement strategy within the content of territorial transformation