The Contribution of MCDM to SUMP: The Case of Spanish Cities during 2006–2021

Abstract

Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMP) are increasingly popular planning tools in cities with environmental issues where numerous actions are usually proposed to reduce pollution from urban transport. However, the diagnosis and implementation of these processes requires broad consensus from all stakeholders and the ability to fit them into urban planning in such a way that it allows the proposals to become realistic actions. In this study, a review of the sustainable urban mobility plans of 47 cities in Spain during the last 15 years has been carried out, analyzing both the diagnosis and proposal of solutions and their subsequent implementation. From the results obtained, a new framework based on a structured hybrid methodology is proposed to aid decision-making for the evaluation of alternatives in the implementation of proposals in SUMP. This hybrid methodology considers experts’ and stakeholders’ opinion and applies two different multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methods in different phases to present two rankings of best alternatives. From that experience, an analysis based on the MCDM methods called ‘Sequential Interactive Modelling for Urban Systems (SIMUS)’ and weighted sum method (WSM) was applied to a case study of the city of Cartagena, a southeastern middle-size city in Spain. This analytic proposal has been transferred to the practical field in the SUMP of Cartagena, the first instrument of this nature developed after COVID-19 in Spain for a relevant city. The results show how this framework, based on a hybrid methodology, allows the development of complex decision mapping processes using these instruments without obviating the need to generate planning tools that can be transferred from the theoretical framework of urban reality.

Urban mobility trends and climate change: sustainability policies in the parking industry

“…However, there has been resistance to change whenever space restrictions for private cars have been introduced. In the case of Seville, a new SUMP is needed to reinvigorate policies to promote high-capacity public transport (Garcia-Ayllon et al 2021 ).…”

Universal Model to Predict Expected Direction of Products Quality Improvement

“…Therefore, the model can be useful for an entity (expert, broker, or bidder) to determine relevant improvement actions to improve currently existing products. The proposed model was developed by combining these instruments: SMART(-ER) method (S-specific, M-measurable, A-achievable, R-relevant, realistic, or reward, T-'based on timeline' or timebound, E-exciting or evaluated, R-recorded or reward) [32], brainstorming method (BM) [33], survey with Likert scale [1,[34][35][36], Weighted Sum Model (WSM) [3,[37][38][39], relative states scale [3,4,40], and Naïve Bayesian Classifier (NBC) [41][42][43][44]. The general concept of the model is shown in Figure 1.…”

“…To calculate the quality level, it is assumed that the WSM method (Weighted Sum Model) is not complicated [3]. The choice of the method results from its usefulness in assessing product quality with respect to the weighting of the criteria and the evaluation of the quality of these criteria [37,38]. Additionally, the method does not take into account the units of measurement of the criteria, so there is no need to normalize the customer ratings [49].…”

“…Quality is estimated separately from the assessment of product states. The formula for calculating the product quality in the WSM method is shown in Equation ( 1) [3,[37][38][39]:…”

“…The universality of the model refers to the universal character of the tools, which were implemented and sequentially combined [57]. For example, the WSM method does not include measure values of criteria; therefore, it allows the estimation of product quality for any criteria, which can be qualitative or quantitative [3,[37][38][39].…”