In dealing with energy shortage problems around the world, energy utilization is closely related to technological development of fossil fuel-to-fuel conversion processes which provide alternatives to petroleum. Among the fossil fuel-to-fuel processes, several processes of making synthetic gas and oil from coal have been developed by several agencies. These processes are characterized by competitiveness and substitutability of diversified technologies in the same research and development area, and they have many deleterious effects on society, such as, resource exhaustion and environmental pollution. Thus alternative processes of technologies and their effects on human society should be examined and compared not only from the economic but from various social points of view as well. Thus, we propose the sociotechnique (SOTEC) concept for selecting the appropriate technology to the existing society.
To solve the Complex Problematique to which the SOTEC concept corresponds is a multicriteria problem. IIASA's System and Decision Sciences Area has recognized the necessity of coping with the multicriteria problem. This study is going on at IIASA and at Kyoto as one of several cooperative studies. This paper can be seen as a preliminary and modest contribution in this direction. The results were presented at IFAC Symposium on Criteria for Selecting Appropriate Technologies under Different Cultural, Technical, and Social Conditions, May 21-23. 1979, Bari, Italy
