Page 220 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

218 10. Advancing life cycle sustainability assessment using multiple criteria decision making

10.6 Proposed framework for MADM based LCSA

The challenges discussed above suggest that there is a need for a systematic framework
for carrying out LCSA based on MADM. The literature shows that many studies have
attempted to use more refined indicators in decision making. For example, end points
obtained from LCA are used for decision making, however considering the uncertainties
in the impact assessment and damage models, such indicators may not be currently suited
for LCSA. Hence, as demonstrated in Niero and Kalbar (2019) and Sohn et al. (2017),
midpoint indicators from LCA can be combined with other indicators from material intensity,
energy intensity, as well as economic and social indicators using MADM. Here we propose
such a framework for MADM based LCSA, as shown in Fig. 10.1.
Step 1: Setting up goals and indicators.
Sustainable development is majorly dependent on three pillars (social, economic,
and environmental). Each of the pillars includes multiple indicators, which explains
the pillar’s major area of concentration. Selection of the indicators for each of the
pillars must consider geographic or regional socio-economic-environmental
suitability. Therefore, the indicators selected must be dependent on the problem
into consideration and available resources in front of DMs without forgetting the
core of sustainable development.
The steps which can be followed during selection of indicators are as follows:
i. Firstly, define the problem that needs to be solved.
ii. Break the problem into smaller components or subproblems or scenarios.
iii. Identify methods/indicators from the literature which are suitable to the
subproblems.
iv. Filter the methods/indicators according to suitability and overlapping,
and if necessary, modify methods/indicators as per regional requirements.
v. Finally, review the methods/indicators for its relevance
Step 2: Divide the selected sustainability assessment methods/indicators into social,
environmental, and economic criteria.
Step 3: Perform detailed analysis using methods such as LCA to obtain environmental
indicators, LCC to obtain economic indicators, and SLCA to get social indicators.
Step 4: Transformation and normalization: transform the attributes and carry out
normalization to obtain indicator scores in commensurate units.
Step 5: MADM method
Choice of MADM method: Necessary to test multiple MADM methods.
Selection of MADM method must consider the type of data available on selected
indicators (qualitative and quantitative), representation of results (performance
score, distance to target, ranking, visual interpretation or probability), transparency
of a method, computational time, and cost of data collection.
Rank reversal: Restructuring of decision problem through scenario-based decision
making by applying case-specific weights can address the issue of rank reversal to
some extent.
Deletion of dominating alternative: Any of the methods such as dominance method
or Jaquet-Lagrkze’s successive permutations method or any outranking approach is
suitable, and each of these methods has their limitations. However, Hasse diagram