This book is the result of some years of research carried out at the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam and at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. The awareness of actual and potential conflicts between economic progress in production, consumption, and technology and the environment has led to the concept of "sustainable development", implying that economic and ecological values are well balanced in evaluation and decision making. The linkages between ecosystems and economic systems are the focus of ecological economics. In ecological economics, a multidimensional approach to economic and policy-making is emphasised. In this book, the introduction of multicriteria decision aid techniques in the framework of ecological economics is widely discussed. Since such techniques are based on a "constructive" rationality and allow one to take into account conflictual, multidimensional, incommensurable and uncertain effects of decisions, they can be considered perfectly consistent with the methodological foundations of ecological economics. Since here the assumption is accepted that efficiency, equity and sustainability are the three conflictual values of economics, a mathematical procedure able to deal with these issues in an operational framework is developed, with a particular view on imprecise information in a practical environmental planning context. Given the problem of the differences in the measurement levels of the variables used for economic-ecological modelling, multicriteria methods able to deal with mixed information (both qualitative and quantitative measurements) can be considered particularly useful. Another problem related to the available information concerns the uncertainty (stochastic and/or fuzzy) contained in this information.

This work examines all the fuzzy multicriteria methods recently developed, such as fuzzy AHP, fuzzy TOPSIS, interactive fuzzy multiobjective stochastic linear programming, fuzzy multiobjective dynamic programming, grey fuzzy multiobjective optimization, fuzzy multiobjective geometric programming, and more. Each of the 22 chapters includes practical applications along with new developments/results. This book may be used as a textbook in graduate operations research, industrial engineering, and economics courses. It will also be an excellent resource, providing new suggestions and directions for further research, for computer programmers, mathematicians, and scientists in a variety of disciplines where multicriteria decision making is needed.

This major reference book comprises specially commissioned surveys in environmental and resource economics written by an international team of experts. Authoritative yet accessible, each entry provides a state-of-the-art summary of key areas that will be invaluable to researchers, practitioners and advanced students.

Fuzzy Multicriteria Decision-Making: Models, Algorithms and Applications addresses theoretical and practical gaps in considering uncertainty and multicriteria factors encountered in the design, planning, and control of complex systems. Including all prerequisite knowledge and augmenting some parts with a step-by-step explanation of more advanced concepts, the authors provide a systematic and comprehensive presentation of the concepts, design methodology, and detailed algorithms. These are supported by many numeric illustrations and a number of application scenarios to motivate the reader and make some abstract concepts more tangible. Fuzzy Multicriteria Decision-Making: Models, Algorithms and Applications will appeal to a wide audience of researchers and practitioners in disciplines where decision-making is paramount, including various branches of engineering, operations research, economics and management; it will also be of interest to graduate students and senior undergraduate students in courses such as decision making, management, risk management, operations research, numerical methods, and knowledge-based systems.

This monograph is intended for an advanced undergraduate or graduate course as well as for researchers, who want a compilation of developments in this rapidly growing field of operations research. This is a sequel to our previous works: "Multiple Objective Decision Making--Methods and Applications: A state-of-the-Art Survey" (No.164 of the Lecture Notes); "Multiple Attribute Decision Making--Methods and Applications: A State-of-the-Art Survey" (No.186 of the Lecture Notes); and "Group Decision Making under Multiple Criteria--Methods and Applications" (No.281 of the Lecture Notes). In this monograph, the literature on methods of fuzzy Multiple Attribute Decision Making (MADM) has been reviewed thoroughly and critically, and classified systematically. This study provides readers with a capsule look into the existing methods, their characteristics, and applicability to the analysis of fuzzy MADM problems. The basic concepts and algorithms from the classical MADM methods have been used in the development of the fuzzy MADM methods. We give an overview of the classical MADM in Chapter II. Chapter III presents the basic concepts and mathematical operations of fuzzy set theory with simple numerical examples in a easy-to-read and easy-to-follow manner. Fuzzy MADM methods basically consist of two phases: (1) the aggregation of the performance scores with respect to all the attributes for each alternative, and (2) the rank ordering of the alternatives according to the aggregated scores.

To assess urban sustainability performance, this book explores several clusters of cities, including megacities, cities of the Global South, European and North American cities, cities of the Middle East and North Africa, cities of Central and South East Asia, a city state of Singapore and a large group of global cities. It applies a multi-criteria approach using a panel of environmental, economic, social and smart indicators to assess progress and policies in global cities including London, New York, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Los Angeles, São Paolo, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, Moscow, Beijing, Seoul, Singapore, Shanghai, Sydney, Tokyo and many others. Additional attention is given to the issues of climate change, poverty and smart dimensions, with renewable energy and the drivers of urban CO2 emissions playing the central role. This book is abundant with case studies considering strategies, policies and performance of the leading cities, including San Francisco, Stockholm and Seoul in greater depth, exploring how their successes can be used by other cities. The book identifies key linkages between different smart and sustainability dimensions as well as investment opportunities in cities with sustainability potential. This book will be of great interest to policy makers, city and regional authorities as well as scholars and students of urban planning and sustainable development aiming to facilitate a sustainability transition in our cities around the world.