Assessing sustainability of transport system through index: A state-of-the-art review

Abstract

The transport is one of the most important sectors that affect the economic development. However, its sustainability may be disturbed due to the remarkable increase in the number of vehicles in city centers and its bad consequences, hence the importance of assessing the transport system and the performance of its different components. Therefore, several evaluation methods were introduced to help decision-makers assess sustainability and many indicators were developed to track the progress of sustainable transport system. This work provides a literature review about the existing approaches used to assess transport sustainability through composite indicators. It aims at analyzing the trends in the existing literature, identifying gaps in evaluating sustainability and suggesting future research perspectives. A total of 47 studies conducted in the period 2002–2022 are examined. The obtained results show that few researchers focused on freight transportand most researchers considered only traditional sustainability dimensions. In addition, the performed analysis demonstrates that the use of different methods of normalization, weighting and aggregation influences the result given by composite indicator. Finally, a set of recommendations for precise and correct sustainability assessment is presented in order to develop future research.

Assessing the Sustainability of Transport Systems through Indexes: A State-of-the-Art Review

“…Additionally, in [11], the authors proposed a non-compensatory composite indicator, demonstrating a commitment to strong sustainability. Additional studies, as evidenced by [40,57,58], introduced composite indicators through the implementation of diverse compensation techniques. These aggregation methods are presented in Figure 8.…”

“…Fuzzy decision rules were implemented in studies such as [42,49,53], while linguistic variables were employed in [34,45,46]. Various MCDM methods, coupled with fuzzy set theory, were applied in the development of composite indicators [35,43,47,48,57,58]. Indeed, the utilization of MCDM methods assists stakeholders in evaluating transport sustainability by assigning weights to the indicators used and identifying optimal solutions.…”

The impact of using Different Modes of Transportation on the Volume of Emissions (A case study of Egypt)

“…Mahmudul Hassan & Wang Xuefeng, 2022) analyzed the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of inland water transport (IWT) in Bangladesh, concluding with priorities like maintaining adequate depth and upgrading port infrastructure for sustainable IWT development. The study (Ayadi et al, 2022) reviewed 47 studies using composite indicators to assess transportation sustainability, recommending further research on freight transport and additional sustainability dimensions. The study (Fahmy & Hekal, 2022) compared four approaches for determining safe navigable channel widths along Egypt's Nile River, finding the CCG (2001) and PIANC (2014) approaches optimal for ensuring safety.…”