Developing Composite Indicators for Agricultural Sustainability Assessment: Effect of Normalization and Aggregation Techniques

Abstract

Abstract:The assessment of the sustainability of agricultural systems is multidimensional in nature and requires holistic measures using indicators with different measurements and units reflecting social, economic, and environmental aspects. To simplify the assessment process, various indicators have different units, and measurements are grouped under broad indicator heads, and normalization and/or transformation processes are carried out in order to aggregate them. In this study, a total of 50 indicators from agricultural sustainability categories of productivity, stability, efficiency, durability, compatibility, and equity are employed to investigate which normalization technique is the most suitable for further mathematical analysis for developing a final composite indicator. To understand the consistency and quality of normalization measurement techniques and compare the benefits and drawbacks of the various selected normalization processes, the indicators of agricultural sustainability are considered. Each of the different techniques for normalization has advantages and drawbacks. This study shows that the proportionate normalization and hybrid aggregation rules of the arithmetic mean and the geometric mean are appropriate for the selected data set, and that this technique has a wider applicability for developing composite indicators for agricultural sustainability assessment.

Relations between Agri-Environmental, Economic and Social Dimensions of Farms’ Sustainability

“…Similar to the case of the general sustainability concept, researchers dealing with sustainability in agriculture stress the importance of integrating the sustainability dimensions [4,26] through aggregating partial indicators. Many researchers make an effort to capture various dimensions of sustainability by preparing composite indicators [84,85]. The indicators can be calculated using a variety of methods.…”

“…Sustainability assessment through such methods is usually based on the expert assessment of alternatives [88]. Talukder et al [84] (p.11) underline that "the aggregation of a multidimensional set of indicators into a unique composite indicator can facilitate the understanding of a complex concept such as agricultural sustainability". Nevertheless, it is important to remember that the choice of aggregation method can affect the results and, in consequence, the assessment of the level of sustainability [84,89].…”

“…Talukder et al [84] (p.11) underline that "the aggregation of a multidimensional set of indicators into a unique composite indicator can facilitate the understanding of a complex concept such as agricultural sustainability". Nevertheless, it is important to remember that the choice of aggregation method can affect the results and, in consequence, the assessment of the level of sustainability [84,89]. While talking about agriculture and farms in particular, an important drawback is the lack of access to appropriate data [90].…”

Realizing Sustainable Development via Modified Integrated Weighting MCDM Model for Ranking Agrarian Dataset

“…Sustainable agriculture development requires several parameters with different units of measurements for obtaining maximum profit [39]. In this work, twenty-seven parameters were considered for building a reliable decision model to rank the groundnut sites.…”

The Application of Multi‑Criteria Taxonomy to Comparative Analysis of Structures of Sustainable Development

“…This is also important when the concept of measurement of this phenomenon is developed. The existing proposals for the quantitative assessment of the progress made in implementing sustainable development are dominated by the approach under which, on the basis of indicators that describe different areas of development (the economic, social and environmental ones), one synthetic measure is constructed in order to describe the changes that occur in these areas at the same time (Kondyli, 2010;Sébastien, Bauler, 2013;Talukder, Hipel, van Loon, 2017;Guijarro, Poyatos, 2018). However, this approach does not enable us to analyse the internal structure of this development, which is often created by completely different results achieved within each area.…”