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An application of reference point techniques to the calculation of synthetic sustainability indicators

  • Theoretical Paper
  • Published:
Journal of the Operational Research Society

Abstract

Sustainability is nowadays a key factor to analyse the development of the societies. Therefore, measuring sustainability is a main concern of the scientific community. The basic necessity to simultaneously consider the economical, social and environmental aspects make sustainability, by nature, a multicriteria concept, and therefore, multicriteria techniques are to be used to measure it. In this paper, we propose a method to develop synthetic sustainability indicators, based on the double (reservation–aspiration) reference point approach. This scheme is applied to each territorial unit considered, in order to determine, on the base of a given set of indicators, a couple of synthetic indicators that measure the weak and the strong sustainability of the unit.

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Acknowledgements

This research was partly supported by the Andalusian Regional Ministry of Innovation, Science and Enterprises (PAI group SEJ-445) and by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (Research Project MTM2006-01921).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Málaga, Málaga, Spain

    F Ruiz, J M Cabello & M Luque

Authors
  1. F Ruiz
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  2. J M Cabello
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  3. M Luque
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Appendix

Appendix

Tables A1 and A2 containing data of the example shown in Section 4 are displayed in this appendix.

Table 4 Values of the indicators of the environmental class
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Table 5 Values of the individual achievement functions for the environmental class
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Ruiz, F., Cabello, J. & Luque, M. An application of reference point techniques to the calculation of synthetic sustainability indicators. J Oper Res Soc 62, 189–197 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1057/jors.2009.187

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/jors.2009.187

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