The hierarchical SMAA-PROMETHEE method applied to assess the sustainability of European cities

Measuring the level of sustainability taking into account many contributing aspects is a challenge. In this paper, we apply a multiple criteria decision aiding framework, namely, the hierarchical-SMAA-PROMETHEE method, to assess the environmental, social, and economic sustainability of 20 European cities in the period going from 2012 to 2015. The application of the method is innovative for the following reasons: (i) it permits to study the sustainability of the mentioned cities not only comprehensively but also considering separately particular macro-criteria, providing in this way more specific information on their weak and strong points; (ii) the use of PROMETHEE and, in particular, of PROMETHEE II, avoids the compensation between different and heterogeneous criteria, that is arbitrarily assumed in value function aggregation models; finally, (iii) thanks to the application of the Stochastic Multicriteria Acceptability Analysis, the method provides more robust recommendations than a method based on a single instance of the considered preference model compatible with few preference information items provided by the Decision Maker.