A methodological approach for sustainability assessment: application to the assessment of the sustainable water resources withdrawals

A number of aggregate indices have been developed to measure various aspects of sustainability using a set of identified sustainable development indicators. The difficulties encountered stem from the complementary and redundancy interactions that exist among sustainable development indicators. Typically, indicators used for the sustainability assessment are not independent of each other. This study presents a methodological approach for assessment of aggregate sustainability indices based on non-additive aggregation method which accounts for synergies and interactions among indicators. A simplified 2-order Choquet integral is proposed to aggregate indicators sustainability scores into an overall sustainable rating. The proposed approach is then applied to the assessment of the sustainable withdrawals of water resources in Lebanon. Lastly, the conclusions and further development are presented.