Multicriteria decision methods applied to the selection and hierarchy of campus sustainability indicators of a Higher Education Institution

摘要

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have a preponderant role in promoting sustainability and must themselves be models for society. From this perspective, sustainability initiatives by HEIs have significantly gained importance in the last two decades, as well as the application of several tools and guidelines that focus on campus sustainability. However, one of the most frequent problems faced by the HEIs is the measurement and evaluation of efforts and results associated with their Sustainability Agendas. Therefore, this article aims to propose a multicriteria approach for selecting and hierarchizing campus sustainability indicators of an HEI (PUC-Rio, Brazil), focusing on one of the thematic axes of its Environmental Agenda. Two multicriteria methods (AHP and AHP-PROMETHEE) were applied in this institutional context, and seven evaluation criteria were considered. The results of both methods were also compared to give more robustness to the selection and hierarchization of the environmental indicators associated with the chosen thematic axis (water). The main contribution of the research to the field of environment measurement and also to HEIs that wish to achieve higher levels of sustainability is a multicriteria methodological approach aiming to improve the current practices for selecting and hierarchizing indicators that could better measure and communicate their sustainability performance.