New Application of SWARA Method in Prioritizing Sustainability Assessment Indicators of Energy System
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5755/j01.ee.24.5.4526Keywords:
Sustainability assessment, Energy system, Step-wise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis (SWARA), Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM)Abstract
A major topic among the current researches on energy is a sustainable energy development and assessment. An importance of energy system is obvious in our life. There are many important energy applications. There are heating and cooling, power generation, desalination, air conditioning and so on. By the year 2020 world will need 50% more energy than today and the Asia-Pacific region will become world's largest consumer of energy. In 21-st century, world faces with the challenge of converting its fossil fuels energy base to the sustainable energy sources. Regarding the increasing rise of the energy demand and consumption, virtually everyone in the world must implement an integrated resource planning (IRP). It is vitally important to achieve sustainable growth.
Sustainability assessment of energy system is one of the important issues in policy making all around the world. Decision making on energy system is very risky and difficult and therefore cannot be individual. Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) is a renowned methodology in decision making and evaluation. Some of the most famous MCDM tools are as following: AHP, ANP, TOPSIS, ELECTRE, MUSA, AKUTA, VIKOR, PROMETHEE, SAW, MOORA, COPRAS, COPRAS-G, SWARA, FARE.
A Step-wise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis (SWARA) method is one of the new MCDM methods presented in 2010. SWARA method is applied for some reasons in this paper. Firstly, SWARA’s perspective is different from other similar methods like AHP, ANP and FARE. SWARA gives the chance for decision and policy makers to select their priority based on the current situation of environment and economy. In this method, expert has an important role on evaluations and calculating weights. The ability to estimate experts’ opinion about importance ratio of the criteria is the main element of this method.
SWARA is developed for identifying importance of criteria and relative weights of each criterion. Current research applies SWARA as a new framework for evaluating and prioritizing sustainability assessment indicators of energy system. General indicator system consists of Resource Indicator, Environment Indicator, Economic Indicator and Social Indicator and their sub-criterions. For instance, complex environmental indicator consists of CO2, SO2 and NOX indicators while complex economic indicator consists of energy costs, investment and efficiency indicators. The research revealed that the most important indicator is Social (0.342). Then, the range of indicators is as following: Environmental (0.284), Economic (0.212) and Resource (0.162).
Finally, the research shows that this methodology can be useful as a framework to operate with sustainability assessment indicators of the energy system. Also, this methodology can be used for decision making in real issues of future researches in different areas. The results of this methodology also can be compared to other methods such as AHP and ANP.
