Sustainability index: A fuzzy approach for a municipal decision support system

Abstract

Changing the behavior and habits of people and promoting sustainable production and consumption, has caused investment and action by Governments in promoting sustainability as a development model. Although many studies have been developed to evaluate the conditions for sustainability, few take into account the economic, environmental and social aspects altogether. Thus, the aim of this study is the development of an index to measure the degree of sustainability of municipalities using indicators for the social, demographic, economic and environmental dimensions. The methodology employed here is based on the concepts of fuzzy logic which models is subjectivity, uncertainty and imprecision. The index is applied to all 5,565 municipalities in Brazil generating a national sustainability study. After an assessment of the data using our index, a comparison is made with the Municipal Human Development index. Similar results are obtained by both methodologies. However, we argue that a fuzzy logic approach is useful since it uses linguistic variables and is intuitive to implement. Thus, the sustainability index is suitable to aggregate the various indicators and it is an important tool for decision makers. Since it provides information that is useful for the formulation, monitoring and evaluation of public policies.