1,721,741 research outputs found
Fuzzy Measures and Experts’ Opinion Elicitation. An Application to the FEEM Sustainable Composite Indicator
No full textTo over pass the limits inherent in liner models, suitable aggregation operators are required, taking into account interactions among the criteria. This becomes more and more crucial in Decision Theory, where all the information can be inferred by one or more Experts, using an ad hoc questionnaire. This is the case of the FEEM SI sustainability index, a composite geo-referenced index which aggregates several economic, social and environmental dimensionsstructured in a decision tree- into a single number between zero (the worst sustainable country) and one (the best one). Fuzzy measure (non additive measures) are here proposed for the aggregation phase. To this purpose, each intermediate node of the structure combines the values of the sub-nodes using a model based on second-order non additive measure. To infer the value of the measure for each node, a suitable questionnaire has been fulfilled by a set of Experts, and the obtained answers were processed using an optimization algorithm. To guarantee the strict convexity of the algorithm, the questionnaire needs to be carefully designed. The individual measures are subsequently aggregated and the numerical results permitte
Assessing SDGs: A New Methodology to Measure Sustainability
Full text linkThe FEEM project APPS – Assessment, Projections and Policy of Sustainable Development Goals – focuses on the quantitative assessment of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted by the United Nations at the end of September 2015. The project consists of two phases. The first, retrospective, computes indicators for all SDGs in 139 countries and then derives a composite multi-dimensional index and a worldwide ranking of current sustainability. This allows informing on strengths and weaknesses of today socio-economic development, as well as environmental criticalities, all around the world. The second phase, prospective, aims at evaluating the future trends of sustainability in the world by 2030. The assessment of the SDGs is carried out by means of an extended version of the recursive-dynamic computable general equilibrium ICES macro-economic model that includes social and environmental indicators. The final goal is to highlight future challenges left unsolved in the next 15 years of socio-economic development and to analyze costs and benefits of specific policies to support the achievement of proposed targets. This paper presents the methodology and the results of the retrospective assessment. Five main steps are described: i) screening of indicators eligible to address the UN SDGs; ii) data collection from relevant sources; iii) organization in the three pillars of sustainability (economy, society, environment); iv) normalization to a common metrics; v) aggregation of the 25 indicators in composite indices by pillars as well as in the multi-dimensional index. The final ranking summarizes countries’ sustainability performance. As expected, Middle-North European countries are at top of the ranking (Sweden, Norway and Switzerland the first three), with the most industrialized European countries such as Germany and UK, however, penalized by insufficient environmental performance. Other highly developed countries are between 24th (Canada) and 52nd place (United States). The emerging nations are scattered in our sustainability ranking. Brazil (43rd) and Russia (45th) precede China (80th) and India (102nd), the latter two especially penalized because of their social complexity. The worst performances, in terms of overall sustainability, are in Sub-Saharan Africa (Comoros, the Central African Republic and Chad occupy the last places in the ranking)
Verso la sostenibilità: uno strumento a servizio delle Regioni
Full text linkCOstruzione indice e confronto relativo alla valutazione SDGs a livello regionale
A non-additive multiple criteria approach for the evaluation of international climate think tanks
No full textThis paper outlines the application of non-additive measures and Choquet integral in the construction of a composite indicator to assess the performance of international climate think tanks and evaluate their influence in shaping climate policies and raising awareness among the general public. The composite index consists of 15 carefully selected indicators according to the feedback provided by Experts within the field and structured into three main pillars: Activities, Publications and Dissemination. In order compare Think Tanks of different size and hence to measure their efficiency, the standardized ranking is also computed dividing the Think Tank outcome in each criterion by the number of its researchers. The application of fuzzy measures and Choquet integral, allowing to take into account potential interactions existing among criteria, increases substantially the model capability both in eliciting effectively Experts’ preferences and in aggregating indicators. Moreover, we present a novel technique for the aggregation of Experts’ preferences where Decision Makers’ weights have been set proportionally to their consistency in evaluating the specific questionnaire
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
A non-additive multiple criteria approach for the evaluation of international climate think tanks
No full textThis paper outlines the application of non-additive measures and Choquet integral in the construction of a composite indicator to assess the performance of international climate think tanks and evaluate their influence in shaping climate policies and raising awareness among the general public. The composite index consists of 15 carefully selected indicators according to the feedback provided by Experts within the field and structured into three main pillars: Activities, Publications and Dissemination. In order compare Think Tanks of different size and hence to measure their efficiency, the standardized ranking is also computed dividing the Think Tank outcome in each criterion by the number of its researchers. The application of fuzzy measures and Choquet integral, allowing to take into account potential interactions existing among criteria, increases substantially the model capability both in eliciting effectively Experts’ preferences and in aggregating indicators. Moreover, we present a novel technique for the aggregation of Experts’ preferences where Decision Makers’ weights have been set proportionally to their consistency in evaluating the specific questionnaire
Supporting the UN SDGs transition: Methodology for sustainability assessment and current worldwide ranking
Full text linkThe FEEM project APPS - Assessment, Projections and Policy of Sustainable Development Goals lies in the stream of research related to the quantitative assessment of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted by the United Nations at the end of September 2015. The project consists of two phases. The first, retrospective, derives a composite multi-dimensional index and a worldwide ranking of current sustainability. This allows informing on strengths and weaknesses of today socioeconomic development, as well as environmental criticalities, all around the world. The second phase, prospective, aims evaluating the future trends of sustainability in the world by 2030. The assessment is carried out by means of an extended version of the recursivedynamic computable general equilibrium ICES macro-economic model that includes social and environmental indicators. The final goal is to highlight future challenges left unsolved in next 15 years of socio-economic development and analyze costs and benefits of specific policies to support the achievement of proposed targets. The methodology goes through the following steps: screening of indicators eligible to address the UN SDGs; data collection from relevant sources; organization in the three pillars of sustainability (economy, society, and environment); normalization to a common metrics; aggregation of the 25 indicators in composite indices by pillars as well as in the multi-dimensional index. The final ranking includes 139 countries. North European countries are at top of the ranking (Sweden, Norway and Switzerland)
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