One of the main novelties of this book is its establishment of a clear relationship between social and public choice on one hand and multiple criteria decision analysis on the other. This relationship leads to the new concept of Social Multi-Criteria Evaluation (SMCE). SMCE is proposed as a policy framework to integrate different scientific languages, for example, when concerns about civil society and future generations have to be considered along with policy imperatives and market conditions.
This work stems from extensive research conducted at the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. It addresses the conflicts between economic progress and environmental sustainability, leading to the concept of "sustainable development," which seeks a balance between economic and ecological values in decision-making. The book focuses on the interconnections between ecosystems and economic systems, emphasizing a multidimensional approach to ecological economics. It discusses the application of multicriteria decision aid techniques within this framework, highlighting their alignment with the constructive rationality essential to ecological economics. These techniques allow for the consideration of conflicting, multidimensional, incommensurable, and uncertain effects of decisions. The text develops a mathematical procedure to address the three conflicting values of efficiency, equity, and sustainability in an operational context, particularly in relation to imprecise information in environmental planning. It also tackles the challenges posed by varying measurement levels in economic-ecological modeling, advocating for multicriteria methods that can handle mixed qualitative and quantitative data. Additionally, it addresses issues of uncertainty, whether stochastic or fuzzy, inherent in the available information.
