sustainability-logo

Journal Browser

Journal Browser

Multicriteria Decision Analysis and the Sustainability of Public Systems Worldwide

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (26 March 2023) | Viewed by 8891

Special Issue Editors

CERIS, Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal
Interests: performance assessment; benchmarking; risk analysis; project management; tourism management; governance; public policy; public administration
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Departament of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Georesources, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal
Interests: regulation; benchmarking; public policies; PPPs; privatizations; local public services; infrastructure; water; solid waste; transport; health sector
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) has been continuously and successfully applied to a countless number of problems related to public services, including health care, education, justice, energy, water, wastewater, sewerage, transports, and urban/rural development, to name a few. In general, policy makers are interested on methodologies capable of reducing public resources waste, which are scarcer each passing day, while they satisfy or exceed most of the stakeholders’ expectations. Policies design should account for different (usually conflicting) criteria and points of view associated with the several stakeholders. These policies, meanwhile, must ensure the medium/long-term sustainability of public systems.

The studies of this Special Issue are expected to address, at least, one of the following topics:

  • Recent and sound developments on MCDA methods used to solve the problem of resources allocation to public services;
  • Design of new policies for public services;
  • Evaluating whether stakeholders’ expectations were fulfilled or exceeded;
  • Study of the efficiency/effectiveness/quality/equity of public services;
  • Analysis of the amount of resources that could be saved if public services were better performers;
  • Comparison of the results (performance) of different policies with the same goal;
  • Identification of priority areas requiring performance improvements and definition of strategies to accomplish them.

Dr. Diogo Cunha Ferreira
Prof. Dr. Rui Cunha Marques
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Multicriteria decision analysis
  • Resources wasting
  • Policy formulation aiding
  • Health care
  • Education
  • Justice
  • Energy
  • Water, wastewater, and sewerage
  • Transports
  • Urban and rural development

Published Papers (4 papers)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

31 pages, 2323 KiB  
Article
The Portuguese Public Hospitals Performance Evolution before and during the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic (2017–2022)
by Paulo Caldas and Miguel Varela
Sustainability 2023, 15(15), 11572; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su151511572 - 26 Jul 2023
Viewed by 730
Abstract
COVID-19 is a disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, which has spread worldwide since the beginning of 2020. Several pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical strategies were proposed to contain the virus, including vaccination and lockdowns. One of the consequences of the pandemic was the denial or delay [...] Read more.
COVID-19 is a disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, which has spread worldwide since the beginning of 2020. Several pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical strategies were proposed to contain the virus, including vaccination and lockdowns. One of the consequences of the pandemic was the denial or delay of access to convenient healthcare services, but also potentially the increase in adverse events within those services, like the number of hospital infections. Therefore, the main question here is about what happened to the performance of Portuguese public hospitals. The main goal of this work was to test if the Portuguese public hospitals’ performance has been affected by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. We used the Benefit-of-Doubt method integrated with the Malmquist Index to analyze the performance evolution over time. Then, we employed a multiple regression model to test whether some pandemic-related variables could explain the performance results. We considered a database of 40 Portuguese public hospitals evaluated from January 2017 to May 2022. The period 2017 to 2019 corresponds to the baseline (pre-pandemic), against which the remaining period will be compared (during the pandemic). We also considered fourteen variables characterizing hospital quality, divided into three main performance definitions (efficiency and productivity; access; safety and care appropriateness). As potential explanatory variables, we consider seven dimensions, including vaccination rate and the need for intensive care for COVID-19-infected people. The results suggest that COVID-19 pandemic features help explain the drop in access after 2020, but not the evolution of safety and appropriateness of care, which surprisingly increased the whole time. Full article
Show Figures

Figure 1

23 pages, 1725 KiB  
Article
Evaluating Portuguese Public Hospitals Performance: Any Difference before and during COVID-19?
by Alexandre Morais Nunes and Diogo Filipe da Cunha Ferreira
Sustainability 2023, 15(1), 294; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su15010294 - 24 Dec 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2122
Abstract
COVID-19 is a well-known respiratory disease that has spread worldwide since January 2020, causing many deaths and massive pressure on health systems. This pandemic’s appearance compromised health service sustainability and quality as many procedures were postponed or canceled, with an expected increase of [...] Read more.
COVID-19 is a well-known respiratory disease that has spread worldwide since January 2020, causing many deaths and massive pressure on health systems. This pandemic’s appearance compromised health service sustainability and quality as many procedures were postponed or canceled, with an expected increase of adverse events like nosocomial infections, in-hospital deaths, and the worsening of the patient’s clinical status. For instance, the year 2020 featured an increase in undesirable results in Portugal: a rise of 10% in delayed first medical appointments, 0.02% in avoidable bloodstream infections, and more than 100 post-operative pulmonary embolisms and septicemia cases per 100,000 inpatients. Therefore, assessing whether the healthcare providers’ performance has changed is paramount. In this case, we evaluated public hospitals in Portugal. To this end, we developed a network data envelopment analysis model relating to efficiency and effectiveness. We observed consistent drops in efficiency when the pandemic started, followed by a recovery to levels above the pre-pandemic ones. Regarding effectiveness, we observed a positive trend during the evaluated period. We conclude that, apart from the great resilience of public healthcare providers, the Portuguese state was unprepared for a pandemic like COVID-19, but still the actions taken (including massive vaccination) were beneficial. Full article
Show Figures

Figure 1

17 pages, 2608 KiB  
Article
Efficiency Evaluation of Cultural Services in the Czech Republic via Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis
by Roman Vavrek and Jiří Bečica
Sustainability 2020, 12(8), 3409; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su12083409 - 22 Apr 2020
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 2102
Abstract
Culture is an irreplaceable means of transferring information between generations. The development of culture, the cultural environment, and the effect of culture exist over the long term. The results are not shown immediately, whereas the economics of subjects of this area (including theatres) [...] Read more.
Culture is an irreplaceable means of transferring information between generations. The development of culture, the cultural environment, and the effect of culture exist over the long term. The results are not shown immediately, whereas the economics of subjects of this area (including theatres) are subject to public control. Public control forces these entities to use public finances efficiently, economically, and effectively. A sample of 11 indicators showing techniques and financial efficiency was chosen to conduct a complex evaluation of the economy of Czech theatres. The importance of the indicators was set by three objective methods used in combination by the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) for the evaluation of management. We show significant differences among the results; in our opinion, it is not possible to exactly set the best method that could be applied in general. Every method can potentially serve as a tool for complex comparison among homogeneous groups of theatres of the Czech Republic, depending on the preferences of their founder, in the public sector such as a municipality, region, or state. Full article
Show Figures

Figure 1

21 pages, 1010 KiB  
Article
Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Techniques for Solving the Airport Ground Handling Service Equipment Vendor Selection Problem
by Chien-Wen Shen, Yen-Ting Peng and Chang-Shu Tu
Sustainability 2019, 11(12), 3466; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su11123466 - 24 Jun 2019
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2893
Abstract
Appropriate airport ground handling service (AGHS) equipment vendor selection (AGHSEVS) can prevent aircraft damage and delays in airlines schedules, and ensure reliable and high-quality ground handling service. Previous research has seldom integrated multi-criteria decision-making techniques with goal programming to solve the AGHSEVS problem. [...] Read more.
Appropriate airport ground handling service (AGHS) equipment vendor selection (AGHSEVS) can prevent aircraft damage and delays in airlines schedules, and ensure reliable and high-quality ground handling service. Previous research has seldom integrated multi-criteria decision-making techniques with goal programming to solve the AGHSEVS problem. This paper describes a new system evaluation model for AGHSEVS by considering both qualitative and quantitative methods. We compare the fuzzy TOPSIS method based on fuzzy weighted average left and right score methods with multi-choice and multi-aspiration goal programming approach of an AGHS company in Taiwan. These study results can help airport ground handling service company managers make optimal decisions for AGHSEVS problems. We hope the practicability of the comparable model with slight modifications of real situation data can be used in other AGHS companies. Full article
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop