The Multi Criteria Decision Analysis presents one methodological approach that is being used within different projects of SERI.

The approach of MCDA is a broad set of different methods, presenting decision aid tools, allowing for evaluation and analysis of decisions with special characteristics.

These characteristics are:

• multiple qualitative criteria or quantitative non-monetarised criteria,
• conflicting objectives,
• trade-offs between criteria,
• risk and/or uncertainties concerning the data or the impacts of the decisions,
• irreversible processes.

Decisions in the field of sustainable development possess most of these characteristics, and are thus not easy solved or prepared, especially not with usual methods, such as CBA.

MCDA methods are able to tackle environmental-economic-social integration, multiple use, inter-regional spatial links and trade-offs, families of conflictual criteria (e.g. costs and benefits of the option under analysis, environmental quality impact in physical and qualitative terms, social impact in non-monetary terms, and even verbal descriptions of aesthetics), qualitative information and uncertainty. They are thus of fundamental importance for the concept of sustainable development (Munda et al. 1994) and present an appropriate tool to operationalise efficiency and sustainability criteria.

The approach of MCDA allows and sometimes requires the involvement of stakeholders (decision makers, people affected by the decision, experts) into the decision process. Their input is used at several stages, e.g. for the definition of the objectives, the elicitation of preferences and weights assigned to criteria, the finding of compromise solutions in case of different solutions etc. This involvement can be and is done in various projects and leads to a better acceptance of the result.

MCDA is an area offering potential in policy implementation in practice, since policy intentions and the extent of their achievement often tend to remain obscure, and trade-offs cannot always be foreseen.

There are mainly two features, that can be supported by a MCDA

1. Evaluation of projects, products, measures and instruments according to different criteria
2. Impact analysis of projects, products, measures and instruments

Both can lead to a comparison between different issues or maybe to a decision for an implementation of a project, product or measure or a basis for negotiation.
Thus whenever we have to deal with multiple goals, such as economic stability, social welfare, high environmental quality and others, an evaluation or an impact analysis is not trivial anymore. Here MCDA offers an excellent approach to deal with these complex issues.

Projects explicitely applying MCDA:

• Fabrik der Zukunft
• "Soziale Auswirkungen in der Nachhaltigkeitsbewertung umweltpolitischer Massnahmen"