Development of an Assessment Method for Evaluation of Sustainable Factories

Abstract

The role of the industrial sector in total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and resource consumption is well-known, and many industrial activities may have a negative environmental impact. The solution to decreasing the negative effects cannot be effective without the consideration of sustainable development. There are several methods for sustainability evaluation, such as tools based on products, processes, or plants besides supply chain or life cycle analysis, and there are different rating systems suggesting 80, 140, or more indicators for assessment. The critical point is the limits such as required techniques and budget in using all indicators for all factories in the beginning. Moreover, the weight of each indicator might change based on the selected alternative that it is not a fixed value and could change in a new case study. In this regard, to determine the impact and weight of different indicators in sustainable factories, a multi-layer Triangular Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (TFAHP) approach was developed, and the application of the method was described and verified. The defined layers are six; for each layer, the pairwise comparison matrix was developed, and the total aggregated score concerning the sustainability goal for each alternative was calculated that shows the Relative Importance Coefficient (RIC). The method is formulated in a way that allows adding the new indicators in all layers as the verification shows, and thus, there are no limits for using any green rating systems. Therefore, the presented approach by TFAHP would provide an additional tool toward the sustainable development of factories.

Investigating a Serious Challenge in the Sustainable Development Process: Analysis of Confirmed cases of COVID-19 (New Type of Coronavirus) Through a Binary Classification Using Artificial Intelligence and Regression Analysis

“…The basic form of a relation between input and output data can be declared as a discrete type of the Volterra functional series, referred to as the Kolmogorov-Gabor polynomial. Equation (2) shows the underlying neural network map, which is also called the polynomial of Ivakhnenko [65,66].…”

“…The concept of sustainable development as a new concept, process, and undeniable fact has emerged in the policies of major governments, and plays a key role in the development of human societies [1][2][3]. Sustainable development is, generally, a combination of the three social, economic, and environmental goals in which political goals are involved.…”

Development of an Assessment Method for Investigating the Impact of Climate and Urban Parameters in Confirmed Cases of COVID-19: A New Challenge in Sustainable Development

“…Due to the complexity of the problems, different approaches may be used to express a problem as a mathematical model [49][50][51][52]. Many studies have been carried out in various fields of science to obtain mathematical models and solutions for determining problems [53][54][55]. To be able to develop a prediction model, one method can be regression analysis.…”

Relationship between Average Daily Temperature and Average Cumulative Daily Rate of Confirmed Cases of COVID-19

“…Therefore, the behavior of the virus in relation to environmental factors is critical. The coronavirus is one of the epidemic diseases that many countries have experienced in the new type of it, COVID-19, and can become a serious challenge and affect the previous efforts on sustainable development [6][7][8][9].…”