Environmental, nutritional and social assessment of nuts

Nuts are considered an important protein source in sustainable dietary patterns but are seldom studied in detail. Here a multi-criteria decision analysis was used to rank 10 nuts and seeds against 11 environmental, nutritional, and social criteria and provide greater insight into the sustainability impacts of this food group. Weights were...

Managing Water and Energy on Small Islands Study Case Caye Chapel

Small islands that support urban communities provide a unique opportunity to study the urban water cycle, its energy needs, and possible links to renewable energy. In this paper, models for an energy generation system and the processes in the urban water cycle are formulated. These are combined and then used to determine optimal parameters...

Evaluation of integrating swat model into a multi-criteria decision analysis towards reliable rainwater harvesting systems

Rainwater harvesting (RWH) has been recognized as one of the most reliable and efficient methods for water supply, especially in arid and semi-arid regions (ASARs) facing freshwater scarcity. Nevertheless, due to the inherent uncertainty of input data and subjectivity involved in the selection of influential parameters, the identification of...

Decisi-o-rama: An open-source Python library for multi-attribute value/utility decision analysis

Environmental decisions are complex as they are multi-dimensional, highly interdisciplinary and not only involve multiple stakeholders with conflicting objectives, but also many possible alternatives with uncertain consequences. The difficulty lies in making trade-offs between tough value trade-offs on the one hand while appreciating...

Quantitative sustainability assessment of household food waste management in the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area

Food waste represents the largest fraction of the municipal solid waste generated in Europe and its management is associated to suboptimal performance in environmental, health, and social dimensions. By processing detailed multi-fold local data as part of a comprehensive and broadly understandable sustainability framework, this study quantifies...

Cost-effective fire protection of chemical plants against domino effects

The propagation of fire-induced domino effects in chemical plants largely depends on the primary fire scenario, on separation distances between the units, and on the presence of fire protection barriers. Passive and active safety barriers are widely employed to prevent or delay the initiation or propagation of domino effects. In the present...

Analysis for water mitigation options using MCDA: A case study in the Galapagos Islands

Lately, due to overutilization of scarce natural resources such as water, tourist islands have been severely threatened. This is also the case in Santa Cruz Island, the main inhabited island of the Galápagos Archipelago. Therefore, a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) was carried out with the aim of mitigating the future water crisis....

Port performance measurement in the context of port choice: an MCDA approach

Purpose: Port performance and port choice have been treated as separate streams of research. This hampers the efforts of ports to anticipate on and respond to possible future changes in port choice by shippers, freight forwarders and carriers. The purpose of this paper is to develop and demonstrate a port performance measurement methodology,...