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Perspectives on Multi-criteria Decision Analysis and Life-Cycle Assessment

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New Perspectives in Multiple Criteria Decision Making

Part of the book series: Multiple Criteria Decision Making ((MCDM))

Abstract

This chapter covers the combined use of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) and Life-Cycle Assessment methodologies. It first reviews environmental Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA), introduces the main challenges and perspectives, including how to extend LCA towards Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA), and discusses how LCAs might be useful for the MCDA practitioner. Then, it discusses how MCDA can complement LCA. Challenges and perspectives are presented concerning LCSA, relative versus absolute evaluation, criteria weighting, and criteria selection.

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Acknowledgements

This research was carried out in the framework of the Energy for Sustainability Initiative (EfS) of the University of Coimbra (UC), Portugal, and the MIT-Portugal Program, and was co-funded by FEDER and Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) through projects SABIOS (PTDC/AAG-MAA/6234/2014), STREAMLAB (MIT-EXPL/SUS/0013/2017) and SET-LCA (CENTRO-01-0145-FEDER-030570).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Economics, CeBER and INESC Coimbra, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

    Luis C. Dias

  2. ADAI-LAETA, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

    Fausto Freire

  3. Faculty of Engineering, University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany

    Jutta Geldermann

Authors
  1. Luis C. Dias
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  2. Fausto Freire
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  3. Jutta Geldermann
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Luis C. Dias .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Production Engineering and Management, Technical University of Crete, Chania, Greece

    Michalis Doumpos

  2. CEG-IST, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

    José Rui Figueira

  3. Department of Economics and Business, University of Catania, Catania, Italy

    Salvatore Greco

  4. School of Production Engineering and Management, Technical University of Crete, Chania, Greece

    Constantin Zopounidis

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Dias, L.C., Freire, F., Geldermann, J. (2019). Perspectives on Multi-criteria Decision Analysis and Life-Cycle Assessment. In: Doumpos, M., Figueira, J., Greco, S., Zopounidis, C. (eds) New Perspectives in Multiple Criteria Decision Making. Multiple Criteria Decision Making. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11482-4_12

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