Fifteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

For a sustainable development in politics, society, technology (e.g. energy, mobility, industrial production) and other fields, the sustainability of products, processes, strategies, organizations and related actions needs to be analyzed and assessed. For that purpose, there are numerous approaches to sustainability assessment. In this context, a growing focus lies on multi-method or combined approaches, which offer the potential for integrated and holistic assessments regarding multiple sustainability dimensions, life cycle phases or input types. The vast number and variety of approaches, however, impede comparison and selection of suitable methods for different assessment situations, possibly leading to assessment errors and incredibility of results and thus, delaying sustainable development. In order to facilitate structured comparisons and systematic approach selection, systematization and comparison frameworks are needed. In a previous paper, Bitter et al. (2018) developed a comprehensive criteria-set for such a framework. The current version of this criteria-set allows for a structured, yet purely qualitative description of multi-method assessment approaches. In the context of ongoing framework development, in this work, consistent (linguistic or numerical) scales for each criterion are developed. With these scales, a quantitative characterization and classification of approaches within the framework is enabled. Hence, it is possible to calculate and compare the “fit” of different sustainability assessment approaches to desired characteristics, i.e. the degree of fulfillment of selection requirements for specific assessment situations. Thus, systematic approach selection is facilitated. The criteria-scales mark an important milestone in the development of a holistic systematization and comparison framework and provide a basis for future works.