Next week I’ll be participating in a workshop to explore harmonization of value-based Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) methodologies for use in sustainability decision-making. The workshop is to be held Monday, May 16. 2016, 7:30 am to noon in conjunction with the ISSST Conference, Phoenix, Arizona.

I think we can all agree this is a truly green and sustainable car – using any decision framework.

“Assessing the sustainability of one solution or policy over another is rarely a simple issue. Alternatives are often better in one aspect of sustainability, human health or ecotoxicity for example, and worse in another. Seldom does a single alternative satisfy all stakeholders. To address this need, numerous Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) methodologies are being used to help industry, NGOs and governmental policy-makers assess the sustainability of decisions and policies. …

The goal of this workshop is to bring these different methods into some kind of harmonization. By identifying what is common between the methods and naming them in the same way, we hope to make all of them more acceptable to government and industry decision makers. It may be that for different types of decisions, different MDCA methods are more appropriate. In addition to sharing best practices, we hope to identify the “must have” features of different types of analyses. “

Agenda

• Introductions
• Introduction to some of what is happening now
  • Traditional MCDA techniques: MAUT, AHP, Outranking – Igor Linkov
  • MCDA as performed by BASF – Markus Frank (tentative)
  • Sustainable Return on Investment – John Parker
  • Sustainability Return on Investment – Lise Laurin
• Brainstorm
• What are the most important criteria for a successful methodology?
• What is common between these methods? Can we identify common ways to talk about these things?
• What areas still need work?
• How do we communicate this beyond today?

I’ll also be presenting at the conference the next day: Tuesday, May 17, 10:30-12:00 [SESSION 4], Track 6: Innovations in Methods – Striving for Standards in Sustainability, Parker, John C.; Williams, John F.