Sustainability assessment of a transportation system under uncertainty: a multi-criteria analysis approach

Abstract

International audience; Urban development is a critical issue that many cities are facing, due to the demography growth which results from the economic attractiveness of the urban centers. Based on common standards such as the Urban Development Plans, some projects for transportation systems renewal are progressively launched. In order to allow social cohesion, especially by providing travelers with services which may allow to better organize the transport, it is necessary to structure the transportation system according to sustainability requirements. This paper examines an integrated approach for assessing the sustainability of the current transportation system design, based on a policy making problem, aiming at providing decision makers with a framework allowing them to choose the most eco-responsible policy amongst many alternatives. Since the sustainability indicators may conflict each other, in order to better take into account the requirements of the whole transportation system in its design phase, a system-based approach has been adopted to characterize the complex structure of these indicators. A general methodology for their elicitation is proposed, using a process-object methodology and based on surveys from recent research on sustainable transportation, along with eco-design principles, in order to take into account urban transport priorities, sustainability challenges and the analysis of the whole lifecycle of the transport infrastructure and equipment. To validate this proposal, a multi-criteria decision method, allowing subjectivity, uncertainty, incomplete judgments and group consensus is then performed, based on a case study which shows the flexibility of fuzzy analytical hierarchy process for such assessment.